She was lovely in her way but a little bit plump for her boyfriend's taste, or so it struck him after they'd been together for a few months. With characteristic diffidence, she let him dictate her diet. He emptied her cupboards of all unsuitable foods. At restaurants he ordered for her, and elsewhere, when she reached for more, he gently relieved her of the serving spoon or nudged the tempting dish away.  Instead, he said, they might as well make love. Aside from distracting her, it would be good exercise.

With her slimmer self, she acquired a perpetual look of longing, because she was always hungry, and this seemed to stir his own appetite.   Slowly, the parts of her that had seemed somewhat distasteful began to preoccupy him. Lying on the bed, he lingered over the curve of her hip, the new depression inside her thigh, a mysterious, inviting place. He caressed the line of her clavicle that was emerging knifelike between her shoulders. He kissed the hollow it created.

What perfume are you wearing? he asked, never having noticed it until now.

L'air du temps, she said. It was a present she'd gotten, she didn't remember when or from whom.

Do you know what I like? he said. It's called Happy. I came across it in a magazine. Subtle, but not so I wouldn't know.

And the next day he presented her with a small bottle of the scent, which she liked as well.

She had always wanted in a vague way to be thinner, but had never had the self-discipline to diet, so she welcomed his help. In fact, she counted on him, as she had on others, as a conduit for her own sense of her body. Just as she was only too happy to wear what her acquaintances spoke of admiringly, and bought the clothes that she'd heard friends or even strangers exclaim over, she took pleasure in contemplating the appearance he fashioned for her. Just so, once she learned what stirred him, certain exotic undergarments, for instance, she often became aroused merely imagining his reaction to her outfitted thus. Knowing that he liked to see her in a thong, especially when the front was gathered up, creasing her vulva, she would sometimes snug her underwear up like that and reach such an excited pitch that when he touched her he would remark in surprise, God, you're soaking, with an undertone of disapproval in his voice even as he hastened to take advantage of her state.

She was reminded of this tone when he presented her with the corset—as if, perhaps, she required additional discipline—or again, maybe her diet wasn't proceeding quickly enough to please him. It was—at any rate, the first one—an odd garment, combining the archaic restraint of stays and laces with a push-up bra peculiarly modern in its sense of conveying rather than constraining her breasts. These were, when she first put it on for herself, like puddings rounding up out of their cups, and the heat at the back of her throat sank down through her. Because of the discomfort, she'd decided she would wear the corset for her boyfriend, but otherwise, no; but now she began putting it on when he wasn't about and wearing it out, admiring her shape in store windows and imagining the reactions of men she encountered, if they only knew. The tightness, she told herself, suppressed her hunger.

When, in bed, her boyfriend put his hands around her waist, which he believed, he said, the corset had actually narrowed, he would talk to her desultorily about his work, and then hers, because he'd taken a special interest in how her career progressed—not nearly fast enough, by his lights, in view of how capable she was. He encouraged her to be more aggressive, at least more assertive, use her looks if she had to—after all, she was in promotions, and wasn't appearance merely a matter of marketing?

Reluctant as she was to do this, because it was not in her nature and seemed somehow unfair besides, she did try. But for every step she pushed ahead, as soon as someone challenged her, or even so much as looked at her in a questioning way, she retreated. Her life seemed to have descended to a secret level, an intimate center that made it ever more difficult for her to concentrate on the more complicated tasks before her.

One night she reported that, seeing quite clearly, with her new, clearer sense of herself, that she was not meant to be a publicist after all, she had, as boldly as he might have hoped, approached her employer and resigned her apprenticeship for a clerical position that suited her perfectly.

In a rare instance of bewilderment, he accused her of losing her mind.

No, no, finding it, she assured him, and laughed a little at his discomposure. Wasn't it true that the more he asked of her, the more she found to offer? It was also true that the more she granted, the more he demanded, now with increasing frustration, it seemed, sometimes even a disoriented sadness. When she stepped into the shower, he disrobed and followed her. He would massage shampoo into her hair, pressing lightly at her temples, working the tight muscles in her neck. He would take the soap from her hand and administer the lather like a sculptor finishing his work—or perhaps simply admiring it. And invariably with his soapy fingers he would penetrate her, probing ever more insistently until he lost all restraint and took her standing up against the wall or, even more awkwardly, in the tub.

As unlikely as it might once have seemed, she began to find his possessive maneuvers amusing now and then. With the earnest way he went about washing her, his frown of concentration, he seemed like someone exploring a foreign country whose language he knew only a little but whose pleasures he longed to partake of as deeply and completely as a native. Of course this was not possible, because she was both the territory he wanted to possess and its sole inhabitant and she could open herself to him no more than she already had. Her bath, once a time of sensual, if not erotic, intimacy, became an experience of odd and increasing estrangement, in which she might stand apart and see herself as if from a distance, touched, but only superficially. He even accused her—was it after her demotion?—of waning interest, and pursued her wandering attention with progressively more desperate and sometimes even brutal measures. At these moments, she fell back further, recovering a titillation somewhat pornographic in the detached observation and intimate pleasure that her new position combined.

She found, in the quiet hollow of her lunch hour, a moment of repose. Because she no longer ate, she had taken to working through lunch, but now she began observing the hour with, if not like, the rest of the staff. She sat at her desk, so composed as to be subtly aware of the disposition of every last little ounce of her flesh, the touch of the fabric along her still arm, the swell of the corset as she drew a breath, the infinitesimal silken weight of one stockinged toe on the other.

In this way she renewed the sensual inventory of her bath—until one day, wandering the deserted office, a man who might once have been one of her clients stopped uncertainly before her, his pause like the interruption of a passing thought. As if she in fact were the thought that troubled him, he considered her briefly, frowned around the empty room, and then came back to her. For a minute I wondered if you were a plant, he said. She did not even exclaim, his remark was so strange. As opposed to a real person, he said, and she allowed herself a small smile. Just sitting there, so exquisite, he said, like a doll, or a mannequin. Even your skin, he began, but this was too much, and he broke off, embarrassed. He remained uncomfortably for another second before starting away, sparing her one last disconcerted look over his shoulder.

She did not give much thought to recounting this exchange to her boyfriend, believing that it would please or amuse him, perhaps as evidence of his success. But he listened in silence, stood and regarded her as if she'd told him something unseemly, even alarming.

That night he was inordinately gentle, not as in the early days of her diet, when his caresses administered encouragement and wondered at his discovery of the figure her flesh concealed, but with a quiet urgency, as if her shape remained a secret that he must conduct to the surface again. When she climaxed short of his own satisfaction, he suddenly fell still. He stopped. She turned to him. She tried to arouse him again, but he was unresponsive, sullen, even. What? she whispered, what? and he said only, I don't know. Then he murmured it again, miserably, I don't know. Do you? What are you doing to me?

Baffled, lovingly, she laughed. He was silent. Her dismay gave way to a curious sort of satisfaction and then, just as quickly, to wonder. What? Feeling herself quite abandoned, she fell into a reverie, letting her drifting thoughts follow his. They arrived naturally at the incident she'd recounted, innocently enough.  Summoning the scene, she was somewhat surprised to find that she remembered the man's face quite well, though she didn't recall noting it at the time. Even your skin, he had said, and what if, instead of retreating, he'd moved a step closer and she'd raised her face, inviting the stranger to feel for himself what he had observed? What if his fingers hadn't stopped at her smooth cheek but had descended to explore the hollow that her boyfriend had sculpted with such patience, where her pulse fluttered? And she'd fallen back, her chair tilting on its silent hinge to give him room.

She fell asleep dreaming his dream and passed a fitful night, the static of infidelity crazing the surface of her sleep.

With this much on her mind the next day, at lunch time she removed herself to the park, where she purchased a sack of peanuts for the squirrels and sat on a bench to administer them. Her hunger, so long a silent constant, surprised her as she drew each nut from the warm paper sleeve. She considered the translucent spots where the oil soaked through, imagined the breaking of the sweet meat in the teeth of the greedy squirrel, the salty explosion, and swallowed. She even began to believe she could feel her taste buds opening, so keen was her desire.

Crazy, she thought, maybe I am, remembering her boyfriend's epithet, and tried, all alone, to retrain her attention on lovemaking, which had worked well enough in the beginning. Her fantasies, she discovered, were hard to bring into focus. Reduced at last to the most literal of imaginings, she retraced the feel of her boyfriend's hand on her, his mouth on her breast. She felt nothing, nothing at all, until he bit her, and then she shifted on her seat. She imagined his fingers importunate, thrusting after her receding self, and she met him with a shudder.

At her feet the busy squirrel stopped abruptly, staring, and she laughed, only to realize that some other movement, not her own, had startled the creature. Someone, approaching, had stopped nearby. Now he sat down on the bench that, with hers, made a corner. Though his gaze traveled the park beyond her, she was aware, as if through the half-life of a look, that he had been watching her. Slowly his eyes returned to her and he considered her in the reflective, inward way of someone who thought he might know her. He didn't; of that she was certain.  But she smiled at his diffident attention. His eyes drifted to where her hands rested on her knees, one open, the other holding the half-empty sack. From this she plucked one round nut, rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, all the while conscious of how closely he observed her. Raising the peanut to her lips, she met his eye, found there an expression that she recognized, and, as yet, savoring the taste, was in no hurry to let him know that he needn't go hungry.

Few women can pinpoint the precise moment when their lives first took a turn down the wrong track—when dreams and truth irreversibly diverged—but as I approach my fifty-second birthday, sharing a rent-stabilized apartment here in Creve Coeur with my Abyssinian lovebirds, this insight is one of the few luxuries that the intervening years have afforded me. I can state with well-considered confidence that my derailment occurred on a soggy, windswept April afternoon in 1971. That was the Saturday that Margot Durant polished off three Brandy Alexanders over a pre-dawn breakfast, skipped an emergency medical appointment, and sped the eight hours from Laurendale, Virginia, to our corner of Rhode Island—where the runaway caboose of her life collided head-on with mine. That was the spring I was a freshly-minted fourteen and hopelessly hopeful.

I'd started babysitting for the Tuckaways the previous December. Charlie Tuckaway and my father practiced obstetrics together, and Jeff Tuckaway belonged to the generation of neighborhood kids who'd butchered "Hot Cross Buns" at my mother's piano, making me a natural choice to look after three-year-old Maia Rebecca. After all, I'd already spent countless Halloween parties and Mother's Day brunches exploring her family's apartment—on the eighth floor of a downtown fin-de-siècle hotel that had been renovated into luxury condos—so I had a good handle on what mischief a toddler might manage with the second Mrs. Tuckaway's evening gowns and costume jewelry. What motivated me was neither pre-maternal curiosity nor a need for pocket cash, but a ruthless, smoldering crush on sixteen-year-old Jeff. After nearly a decade during which the boy had been merely my father's colleague's son—a quiet and reserved kid whose mother had choked to death on a mackerel bone—I had been seized suddenly that past autumn with an irrepressible craving for his affection. By Thanksgiving, variations on the name Victoria Elizabeth Tuckaway covered every page of my geometry notebook. Needless to say, I was more than willing to sacrifice my Saturday evenings for the brief encounters that Jeff and I shared before he left me alone with his half-sister to meet up with high school friends.

On that particular Saturday, the Tuckaways had sent for me early. They had plans to attend Dr. Tuckaway's thirtieth reunion at Yale—which he referred to as New Haven, as though the university and the city were synonymous—and Jackie Tuckaway greeted me at the door in a low-cut black cocktail dress. She was closer to my age than to her husband's, and had actually babysat for Jeff herself many years before, but her thin lips and bony features weren't especially pretty, and I'd once overheard my mother describe her as more of a consolation prize than a trophy. "I'll call you the second we get there," promised Jackie. "There's a snack for both of you in the Frigidaire, and I taped the number of the University Club on the cabinet above the phone. We'll be home by midnight—even if I have to whack Charlie over the head with a champagne bottle and lock him inside the trunk of the Cadillac." She removed three ten dollar bills from her satin purse and tucked them into my hand. "What else? What am I forgetting?"

Dr. Tuckaway emerged from the vestibule closet, carrying a pair of galoshes and an umbrella. "You'd think we were going to the moon," he said as he tested the umbrella springs. "It's only New Haven, darling. It's practically shouting distance."

"Please don't open that thing inside the house," answered Jackie. She surveyed her living room like a raptor scavenging a battlefield for carrion.

Maia Rebecca, who'd been engrossed by her Etch-A-Sketch, bounded off the sofa without warning and hugged her mother's legs. The pair exchanged a salvo of kisses—on foreheads, on cheeks, on matching pug noses. Meanwhile, Dr. Tuckaway employed a shoe-horn to squeeze his galoshes over his Italian loafers.

"Jeff!  We're leaving!" shouted Mrs. Tuckaway.

Jeff was still in his bedroom. He did not answer.

"Mommy loves you," Jackie reminded her daughter. She turned to me and added, "If anything happens, anything, you know where to find us."

"Nothing is going to happen," said Dr. Tuckaway, chuckling. "Good night, Vicky,"

And then the door closed behind them and the apartment was mine. For a moment, I could shut my eyes and pretend that these were my leather loveseats, my crystal chandeliers, my mahogany sideboard—that Maia Rebecca was my daughter and Jeff Tuckaway belonged entirely to me. While I fantasized, the girl tugged at the sleeve of my blouse. She wanted to bake a frosted cake—as we had done the previous week for Jeff's birthday—but now I possessed neither the ingredients nor the patience.

"Do you want to play with the Upsys and the Downsys?" I asked her.  Maia Rebecca had recently received these mischievous plastic creatures as birthday gifts, and they required an open area to fold out the various cardboard mats that composed their "Happidiculous World"—an excuse for us to remain in the living room where Jeff's path might cross mine. "Can you walk to your room like a big girl and bring back Flossy Glossy and Pocus Hocus?"

"Flossy Glossy is sick," she said decisively. "You have to take her temperature."   

I listened to the girl's tiny feet pattering toward her bedroom. Outside, the wind slapped sheets of water against the windows, and the four o'clock sky had turned a cheerless gray. In its heyday—half a century before I'd been born—Creve Coeur had grown rich supplying the lead-based paint that coated Boston and Philadelphia. By the time I entered middle school, all that survived from these glory days was the enormous, globe-shaped billboard opposite the Balk & Twimble Building that shouted: "Sherwin-Williams:  Cover the Earth." I was watching the pellets of rain as they ricocheted off the top of this sign when the doorbell chimed.

I assumed that Mrs. Tuckaway had forgotten something "indispensable," as she had done many times before:  a cigarette case, a mascara wand. I'm not sure that I can convey the intensity of the shock I experienced when I opened the door, expecting to greet my overly fashion-conscious employer, and instead stood face-to-face with a frumpy, middle-aged woman sporting a well-worn trench coat and carrying a quilted carpetbag. She looked as Mary Poppins might have appeared had the governess arrived at her own thirty-year reunion on the gusts of a cyclone—except that this woman at the door lacked both a hat and an umbrella. Water trickled like teardrops from her salt-and-pepper bangs.

"I'm sorry to intrude," she said. "I'm Margot Durant."

She extended her free arm—too far from her body, with her elbow fully un-flexed—and I had no choice but to shake her hand. I sensed that I was no longer alone in the vestibule and I glanced over my shoulder. Jeff Tuckaway stood behind me, arms akimbo, his soccer jersey taut across his muscular chest. I waited for our visitor to explain herself—but she didn't. She seemed to be staring past me, and her eyes took on a distant, dreamy glaze.

"Do you want something?" I asked—immediately shocked at how rude I sounded.

Margot Durant didn't appear to be offended. "I used to live here. Eons ago," she explained. "I do hope you'll forgive me for sneaking past the doorman and barging in like this, but I don't think I could handle being announced at my own girlhood home like a complete stranger. Does that make any sense?"

"Dr. and Mrs. Tuckaway aren't here right now," I said apologetically.    

This information didn't faze Margot—and, in hindsight, I suspect she might have waited  for my employers to depart before presenting herself. "I've driven all the way from Virginia," she said. "May I come in? Just for a moment?"

I looked to Jeff for guidance. "It is okay?" 

"You're the boss tonight," he replied with a grin.

"I can't stay very long," said Margot. "You wouldn't mind if I just took a peek at my old bedroom, would you?"

I didn't have an opportunity to answer. At that moment, Maia Rebecca charged into the vestibule cradling a plastic doll. "Who's that?" she demanded.

"I'm Margot," said Margot. "Who are you?"

Maia Rebecca examined our visitor suspiciously.

"Margot didn't want to get wet in the rain," I said. "So she came inside."

"Like the Cat in the Hat?" asked Maia Rebecca.

Jeff laughed. I felt myself blushing and looked down at my toes. A dog was barking in one of the neighboring apartments.

"Exactly."  Margot beamed. "Like the Cat in the Hat."

"Flossy Glossy is sick," said Maia Rebecca. "She has mumps."

"How dreadful," Margo sympathized, sounding genuinely aghast. Her nervous eyes met mine, and her eyebrows rose slightly. "So I can come in?"

"All right," I agreed. "I guess."

"I knew you'd say yes," cried Margot—squeezing her palms together in a display of enthusiasm. "I knew you were a sweet girl. The minute you opened that door, I said to myself—and I wouldn't tell you this if it weren't the God's honest truth—the minute you opened that door, I said, that's a girl who reminds me of me when I was her age." Our visitor looked me up and down, but as though she was actually seeing me for the first time. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen," I said.

"I'm fifty-two," said Margot. "An old maid."

Then she stepped past me and deposited her carpetbag onto the hardwood parquet with a resounding thud.

•

"What in heaven's name have you done here?"

Margot Durant stood at the center of Jeff Tuckaway's bedroom, her carpetbag at her side, rubbing her eyes as though trying to brush away a disturbing dream. I'd never been inside Jeff's sanctuary before, so I savored each glimpse of the dirty clothes piled beside his desk and admired the posters on the corkboard walls as though they were masterworks displayed in a museum. Janis Joplin. Jefferson Airplane. Maia Rebecca followed our visitor's every gesture—practically entranced—as though anticipating Seussian antics. Jeff sank into a beanbag chair, looking ill-at-ease and adorable.

"I don't understand how everything's grown so big," said Margot. "They say everything's supposed to seem smaller when you return to your childhood haunts, but this place feels like an aircraft hangar." She traced her fingertips along the wainscoting, then glanced up at the ceiling, where a hairline crack bisected the plaster. "You know what's wrong? There used to be a chest of drawers over by the window." The memory brought a glow to Margot's cheeks. "It was a colossal, nineteenth-century piece—not something one sees very often nowadays. My grandmother's grandfather brought it down with him from French Canada on a horse-drawn wagon—or at least that's what Mama always told me."

I smirked at Jeff and rolled my eyes. I was secretly enjoying Margot's presence, because it gave me an excuse to spend time with my dreamboat—and proximity, I believed, was the mystical flame that ignited passions. Jeff shrugged.

"Do you children have anything we could stand over there temporarily?" asked Margot. "A spare bureau? Or maybe a chifforobe? If it wouldn't be too much trouble ... ."

I was so taken aback that our visitor had referred to us as 'children'—a reminder that my marriage with Jeff was pure fantasy—that a moment passed before I realized that this woman actually wanted us to shift around the furniture.

"That highboy we passed in the foyer," said Margot—pronouncing 'foyer' as though it rhymed with Charles Boyer. "Do you think you two could lift that?"

She had addressed her question to Jeff, and only to Jeff, as though we both understood that my opinion on the matter was irrelevant. The man of the house snapped to his feet—he stood a full head taller than our visitor—and my stomach fluttered as he took command of the situation. "I know you've driven a long way, ma'am," he said, with his arms akimbo like a superhero, "but this isn't a good time ... ."

Margot frowned. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to impose."

"It's just that my parents are out for the evening," offered Jeff.

"No, you're right. Absolutely right. Who am I to ask you to start lugging around furniture?" Margot sighed. "I'll just pack up my bag and be off."

Our visitor was halfway to the bedroom door when Maia Rebecca stomped her tiny feet.  "Do what she wants," the girl ordered. My charge sounded as though she was on the verge of sobs. "If you don't do it, I'll never ever forgive you."

An outburst like this was highly uncharacteristic. Even Margot appeared surprised.

"It's just for a few minutes," she promised, hopefully. "I'd help you myself, you understand, but I have the vertebral column of a jellyfish."

A harsh silence descended upon the room—punctuated by the staccato lash of the storm against the exterior brickwork. My crush rested his index finger on his closed lips, the very portrait of Byronic splendor, and a deep groove settled between his penetrating black eyes. Watching him made every nerve in my body quiver. All three of us breathed in the hush, awaiting Jeff Tuckaway's verdict.

 He cupped his balled fist in his palm. "Let's do it," he declared.

So we heaved and dragged the rosewood dresser—which Margot insisted on calling a highboy—into Jeff's bedroom. The dresser wasn't particularly heavy, as it contained mostly spare tablecloths and beach blankets, but the corners had to be angled precisely to squeeze through the doorframe, and during this process, I managed to crush my foot under one of its cabriole legs. While Margot admired our handiwork, Jeff examined my rising bruise. "That needs ice," he advised—and he retrieved a scoop of towel-wrapped jagged cubes from the kitchen. The boy's touch on my bare flesh sent an electrical current up my leg. I closed my eyes, savoring the feel of our hands as they joined over the makeshift icepack.   Paradise. 

"It's just not right," exclaimed Margot. "I'm afraid I've come to the wrong place."

I'd nearly forgotten our visitor still remained in the room. I opened my eyes to find her standing before the highboy, hands on her fleshy hips, shaking her head like a dissatisfied interior decorator. Maia Rebecca stood behind her, her slender arms folded across her flat chest, shaking her own pigtailed head and scowling.

"I don't mean that I'm in the wrong apartment," Margot explained. "This was my nursery. I just thought the place would be different—that I could figure things out here." I wasn't sure if she was speaking to herself, or to us, and I'm not certain that she knew either. "If it wouldn't be too much bother, young man," she continued, now clearly addressing Jeff, "could I trouble you for something to drink?"

"Sure thing," agreed Jeff. "What would you like?"

He released his grasp on my foot and I felt inexplicably exposed.

"You don't know how to make a Brandy Alexander, do you?" Margot asked. "I suppose not. Quite frankly, neither do I ... not a good one ... but I had three of them with breakfast—to be honest, I had three of them for breakfast—and they were pure heaven." It hadn't crossed my mind at first that our visitor wanted an alcoholic beverage, but if Jeff was caught off-guard, he didn't let it show. "How about something with juice? Maybe a vodka and cranberry?"

"I can make a screwdriver," offered Jeff. "On the rocks."

"Sold," agreed Margot.

Jeff bolted out of the room and returned several minutes later carrying two scotch glasses. One for Margot and one for himself. Nothing for me. I assured myself that this was because I was on duty, that it wasn't personal. Any doubts I had were assuaged even further when he settled down beside me on his futon, leaving the beanbag chair for Margot. Maia Rebecca scooted in between us: a picture-book family.

"Thank you most kindly, young man," said Margot. She polished off half of the screwdriver in two large swigs. "Strong," she added approvingly. "I admire a man whose not afraid to mix a strong drink."

Now it was Jeff's turn to blush. Blood rushed to the tips of his ears.

"My idea was that I'd visit all of the important places in my life," said Margot, apropos of absolutely nothing. "That if I made a grand tour of my past, I could figure out exactly where my life went wrong."  She drew another sip from her drink. "It struck me as a good idea when I climbed into the car this morning, but now it seems rather foolish."

"I'm sure your life isn't so bad," said Jeff.

"I'm sure it is," countered Margot. "Maybe the problem is that I was good-looking once—not that you'd know it anymore. And I was well-off too. My father was the highest-paid pediatric surgeon in all of New England ... .I was going to headline the Copacabana ... I was going to be the next Rosemary Clooney ... .Anyway."  She stared into her scotch glass, joggling the exposed ice cube. "I suppose it's only hard not having things once you've already had them."    

Margot's presence suddenly made me feel uneasy, even derelict in my obligation to the Tuckaways, and I wanted her to leave. While we'd been moving around the dresser, a hazy twilight had enveloped Jeff's bedroom—none of us had thought to flip on the overhead light—and now our surroundings approached the brink of genuine darkness. Jeff had deposited his screwdriver, nearly untouched, on the end table. "I hate to do this to you, ma'am" he said, stretching his arms, "but I have to meet up with my buddies ... ."

Margot ignored him. Maia Rebecca cradled her sick doll with devotion.

"Tell me, young lady," said Margot. "What do you want to be when you're fifty-two?"

"I don't know," I answered. "It guess it depends on who I marry."

"Well, that's a disappointing answer," she answered.

"How about you?" she asked Jeff. "What are your future plans?"

"I'm going to be a doctor," he replied. "Like my dad."

"Flossy Glossy needs a doctor," Maia Rebecca demanded. "She's dying. We need to call an ambulance."

"She'll be fine," I promised. "Why don't I kiss her and make her better?"

"We need to go to the hospital," pleaded Maia Rebecca.

"I have an idea," interjected Margot. "Does your dad have a stethoscope somewhere?"

"I guess so," said Jeff.

"Go get it," ordered Margot—her voice whetted with authority. "And be a dear, while you're up, and freshen my orange juice."

Something in the woman's tone suggested that it would be a mistake to challenge her, that she was to have her stethoscope—one way or another. Jeff must have sensed this too, because he rubbed the bridge of his nose with his index fingers for a moment, as though deep in thought, and then went off to his father's study to retrieve Dr. Tuckaway's black bag. On the way out the door, he flicked on the overhead light, abandoning us to its stark yellow glow.

•

When Jeff returned with his father's spare stethoscope, an ancient device that consisted of two copper ear pieces and coils of yellow tubing, Margot ordered us to rearrange the furniture again. Now it was a cedar bookshelf against the far wall that disturbed her. "Pull it back about ten feet," she instructed.  "If you bear with me for a few more minutes, you won't regret it." I wasn't so confident, but Jeff assumed the lead. He slid the bookcase side-to-side as though waltzing with the shelves, drawing his "partner" a few inches from the wall with each step. I guess he'd convinced himself that any middle-aged woman who would let him drink hard liquor at his leisure might also have something else worthwhile to offer. Meanwhile, Margot examined Flossy Glossy with the diaphragm of the stethoscope.

"She does have the mumps," declared our visitor while Maia Rebecca looked on in awe. "I can feel a mump right here below her heart ... and another one here on her forehead. Fortunately, we've caught them in time. What this young lady needs is vaccination. And I think I should have one too, just to be safe." To my own amazement, Margot then rapidly removed a syringe from her carpetbag, slid he skirt above her stocking, and injected the contents of the syringe into her thigh. When she was done, she poked the plastic doll with the needle. "Do you want one too?" she asked Maia Rebecca.

The girl shook her head vigorously.

"Very well," agreed Margot, carefully wrapping the empty syringe in tissues and returning it to her travel bag. "Insulin," she explained to me. "For diabetes."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be. That's the least of my problems," replied Margot. She examined the vintage stethoscope like a jeweler appraising a gemstone. "When I was a few years older than this little darling," she continued, patting Maia Rebecca on the knee, "my Papa convinced me that, if you listened closely enough, you could hear the past through a stethoscope. Sort of like hearing the sound of the ocean through a conch shell. He'd claim that George Washington spoke to him through a old stethoscope just like this one—that auscultation was a window into the fourth dimension—and that I could hear the past too, if I listened closely enough ... .But I never did." Margot plugged the device into her ears, measuring the heartbeat of the air. "My Papa didn't make it to fifty-two," she concluded. "Cancer of the larynx."

I said that I was sorry, once again.

"Me too," said Margot. "Me too."

She stood up and crossed the room. "You can't hear the past through a stethoscope," she declared,  "but it's a handy tool nonetheless. I was probably about your age, young lady, when I finally figured out what it was good for ... ."

Our guest lowered herself onto her knees between the bookcase and the wall, using the wooden shelves to maintain her balance. "There's some sort of ventilation duct that runs behind here," she explained. "You can hear everything in 8B and 8C—and sometimes you can pick up 7C and even 7D if you're lucky." Margot's tone didn't betray so much as a hint of self-consciousness; if anything, she sounded excessively enthusiastic, like a ham radio operator discussing frequencies. "When I was a girl, the Pastarnacks lived in apartment 8C. As in Pastarnack's Pianos. Let me tell you, pianos weren't all that couple could play."

I'd met Mrs. Pastarnack once in the elevator. An elfin creature with a thin cap of faux-orange hair, a brittle old woman leading around an arthritic dog in a crocheted sweater. It was hard to fathom that ancient lady as anything other than a passionless widow.

"Now let's see ... ." said Margot. She traced the stethoscope along the wallpaper.  "Once I've taught you where to look, you can do this any time you want."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I asked.

Jeff said nothing. Maia Rebecca had fallen asleep on the futon.

"Of course, it's a good idea," snapped Margot. "Here. Listen."

She practically forced the stethoscope into my hands. Against my better judgment, I placed the bell of the device against the wall. From the adjoining apartment, I detected muffled voices. A couple discussing how much to tip the doormen at Easter.

Margot pointed to another spot—beside the electrical outlet just above the molding.  "Sometimes you can hear 9B from over here—or at least you could once," she announced. I listened. The rubber tubes picked up the rhythmic cheers of a sporting match on a distant radio or television, filtered through the stuttering of pipes. As I listened, the idea stuck me that someone might be listening at my own bedroom walls at night—eavesdropping as I moaned my crush's name into my pillow—and I was relieved to pass the stethoscope over to Jeff. While actually listening through the device made me uncomfortable, watching Jeff as he listened was a different matter entirely. The boy approached the wall as he might a medical patient and his examination looked both scientific and thorough.

"Nothing," he said. "Just the Serspinskis having dinner."

"Are you sure?" demanded Margot.

She took hold of the stethoscope and listened again. Her disappointment, as she let the ear pieces fall to her neck, was as palpable as an open wound.

"Too bad. I was hoping for something juicier," she said. "It's early still, of course, but I suppose a lot of it turns on who your neighbors are ... ."

I found a rush of courage in Margot's setback. "I just don't get it," I said. "Why would you want to spy on people like that? Honestly, it's creepy."

I peered at Jeff out of the corner of my eye—hopeful that, by taking the moral high ground, I might make a favorable impression on him. The boy's smile was unmistakable. But Margot didn't offer me an opportunity to press my advantage.       

"What's that Louis Armstrong says when people ask him to explain jazz?" she demanded. "'If you gotta ask, you'll never know.'  Well, young lady, all I can tell you is that when I was your age, it was very reassuring for me to discover that the neighbors' lives were as much as mess as my own ... ." Margot's voiced trailed off and, as quickly as it had flared, her strength seemed to evaporate. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile. I reached toward her without thinking and took hold of her bony hand. "Of course, you two look like such a happy couple," she said in a shaky voice. "Maybe things really will work out for you ... ."

I didn't have a moment to enjoy this prophesy. Not a moment.

"Weren't not a couple," Jeff shot back—as though insulted. "She's the babysitter."

I gasped—a sharp, revealing burst.

"Oh," said Margot. "I thought ... ."

No more needed to be said. I stared down at the tessellated tiles, following their indecipherable design toward the corners of the room. I sensed that Jeff was also looking away, that he probably felt sincerely awful for having spoken so sharply. Margot's hand squeezed around mine; I felt the singe of tears on my face. Outside, the storm had died down, and now the soft patter of raindrops on the sill melded with Maia Rebecca's delicate breathing. I suppose the silence lasted only seconds, but it truly felt like decades.

"It's getting late," said Jeff. "I guess I should go meet up with my buddies"

Margot squeezed my hand tighter. "I think I'm going to stick around for one more drink with this young lady," she said. "You won't mind that, honey, will you?"

I shook my head. I didn't care either way.

"Okay, if that's what you want," said Jeff. I heard him zippering his varsity jacket, but I still didn't take my eyes off the floor. "Goodnight, ma'am. Goodnight, Vicky."

His footsteps retreated rapidly down the corridor and then the apartment door reverberated in his wake.  I looked up to find Margot staring at me.   She wore the expression a woman who has cracked a mirror and is examining her own horrified features through the fractured glass.

"I'm sorry I said that," she said. "About you two young people being a couple."

"It's okay," I lied.

"No, it's not," replied Margot. "I guess we're both having a bad day."

I let the tears cascade down my cheeks:  a flume, a torrent. Across the room, Maia Rebecca hugged the plastic doll in her sleep—so innocent, so inaccessible.

"I was supposed to go to my doctor in Richmond this morning, but I drove here instead," said Margot. "That's not any excuse for anything. It's just the way it is."

"Is something really wrong with you?" I asked.

The woman drew my hand up to her chest, placing it inside her blouse. I could feel the puckered contours of the skin above her left breast, the tumor bulging like a rock formation though the skin. Her heart pulsed delicately beneath the damaged flesh.

"I thought it would be different here. That things would make sense. But now I think it might have made much more sense to stay where I was," said Margot. "Sometime you don't know the damage you've caused until you've done it."    

"I'm glad you came," I said—wanting this to be true. 

"The truth is, you won't remember any of this in the long run," said Margot. "I can't even recall the names of the boys I went with at fourteen."

I told myself that she was right, that my life would turn out very differently from hers, although already I had my doubts. But, for a few more moments, I fought them off. We stood side-by-side under the incandescent light of that bedroom, surrounded by the teenage residue of one of those many boys who would never love me—my hand upon Margot Durant's pulsing heart, together pretending that life's misfortunes were not inevitable, and that a promising surprise might arrive at any moment.

A few weeks ago Madam Devieux—Solange as I am permitted to call her—began keeping rabbits. They've been given the largest of the guest rooms. Solange is against confining them in cages.

At her behest, the room has been emptied of everything, even the potted plants. Rosa spent a day dispersing succulents and orchids throughout the other rooms of the apartment.  The horticulturist, who once a week attends to the household flora, was not consulted. Apparently le vétérinaire had warned Solange that certaines houseplants were dangereuses to the rabbits if ingested. Of course, she didn't recall which ones.

Why the walls in the rabbits' room had to be stripped bare was less clear. But I was glad to "carefully and gently take down the art" as instructed. My internship in the Administration of the Private Collection had already involved far too many trips to drop off and pick up Solange's dry cleaning.

Articahut, s'il te plait, sois mignon and help Malvi," Solagne told Gerhart, the current artist-in-residence of the studio in the north end of the apartment. The muscle at the angle of his jaw clenched and unclenched like a fist. Ordinarily, he merely follows Solange's doings with the silent scrutiny of a dog.

With Gerhart's grudging assistance, I hung the Rothko from the rabbits' room in Solange's yoga space. The painting's melting lozenges of yellow and orange paired with the spikiness of the relocated Pencil Euphorbia struck me as weirdly satisfying. When I said as much to Gerhart, he just glowered at me from behind his cigarette.

I brushed at the scrim of smoke with my hand. "Dude, it's not like Solange asked you to scrub the toilet or anything, ok?"

Gerhart snorted smoke out of his nostrils, expelled a wheezy laugh. "You are so naive," he said.

The large, crushed-car Chamberlain sculpture that used to occupy the corner of the rabbits' room was removed to Gerhart's studio.

"As an inspiration for you, n'est-ce pas?" Solange thrilled.

Gerhart dutifully agreed, but judging by what I've seen of his work—the mural he's painting in Solange's living room resembles the former Berlin Wall—I suspect that he scorns the sculpture as frivolous.

The smaller artworks from the rabbits' room were designated for display in the kitchen for the édification aesthétique of the staff. Unless Solange is entertaining, her kitchen staff consists only of Jack, who couldn't care less about art. Other than cooking for Solange, which he has done through all her phases from Japanese macrobiotic to the household's currently prevailing cuisine de la Normandie, Jack is interested only in drinking himself senseless.

But Solange has great faith in the power of art to redeem, ennoble, exalt, and so the Ellsworth Kellys now hang in the kitchen.

Solange's religious zeal for everything from cave art to contemporary artists is touchingly old-fashioned. Rooms are endlessly rearranged in the service of her ever-growing collection of paintings and sculpture. The apartment is full off reliquaries for ceramics, weavings, beadwork, and glass.

Still, Solange has read excerpts from Derrida, Lacan. In public, and especially around Gerhart, she talks about art in terms of signifier and signified. He nods in a way that suggests that he's not displeased, and responds in kind.

My own skills in the language of critical discourse have failed to warm Gerhart toward me. He has yet to invite me to set foot in his studio. No doubt the disparity in our status plays a part. He is a risen art star, I am studying to be a curator. But there's also my involvement with the rabbits.

I see him roll his eyes whenever Solange tells the story of the rabbits—which is often, since everyone who comes to the apartment is taken to admire them.

Solange bought the first pair on a whim at the animal market on the Seine.

"Naturellement, the assumption was that I meant to cook them," she explains. "I've eaten rabbit of course. Grand-père hunted for sport and abhorred waste."

Four of the rabbits are a rare breed. The small calico one is from a species that verges on extinction. Or so Solange says. Three are angoras. The tips of their ears have round tufts like the dandelion puffs that children make wishes on. There is also a large brown hare and an orange rex. The hare terrorizes the rex.

It's my responsibility to feed the rabbits and to pick up their jellybeans, as Rosa calls the droppings. I've tried to tell Rosa that they're really shaped more like ball bearings, but her English is limited.

Caring for the rabbits is easier than waitressing, and the hours are better. It also beats filing slides and answering phones in some gallery that considers itself too hip to pay minimum wage. The internship not only pays for a sizable chunk of my tuition, but also results in the  occasional windfall—an invitation to a gallery opening Solange doesn't feel like attending, a v.i.p. pass to a sold-out exhibit, a seat at a black-tie gala when a place at her table unexpectedly goes unfilled. I've stood, sat, dined alongside artists I would never have met on my own, and had the privilege to witness them celebrate, gossip, and brawl.

The perks make it easier to put up with the way Gerhard bares his teeth in something that's supposed to pass for a smile whenever he sees me carrying the rabbit's salad bowl to them.

"Those rodents eat better than a lot of people in this country do," he sneered once.

"So do you."

"And you," he said, as though I'd overlooked the obvious.

Rosa, too, cannot understand why an American stoops to do what she, an illegal alien refugee with few prospects, refuses to do.

"House, I clean. Rabbits no. I say this plain to Madam Devieux face," Rosa confided to me after I'd been caring for the rabbits for just a few days.    

"Weren't you afraid you'd get fired?"

"Oh si. Si. Is why I say to her I am ignorant of rabbits." She made a soft spitting sound to indicate that any self-respecting immigrant, no matter how desperate, would have done the same. "Madam Devieux must to find somebody more smart, I say to her. Like you."

We were standing at the door of the rabbits' room and Rosa whispered as though she were afraid of being overheard.

"In my country, bedroom is for people. Rabbit for eating."

"These rabbits are pets," I said. "It's different."

"You have beautiful hair, small white hands. Why you no marry?  No have to do this no more."

"I like rabbits," I said, and knocked loudly on the door.

"What for you do that?"

"To scare the rabbits away from the door."

Rosa laughed. Her metal tooth flashed in the hard brightness of the halogen track lighting. "Loca," I heard her say as she walked away.

These days I have to slip into the rabbits' room as quietly as I can. The knocking has conditioned them to gather at the door. The last time I knocked, the orange rex bolted out between my legs. I screamed. The salad bowl flew out of my hands. Dandelion greens, carrots and four kinds of lettuce rained down on the carpeted warren. The escaping rabbit's toenails click-clicked on the polished marble of the hallway. I chased the rex to where it hid under a display of antique Navaho blankets. The blanket stand toppled. The rex shot in a single leap into Solange's office. Luckily, she was out introducing Gerhart to potential collectors.

Jack came running from the kitchen. "Girl, what in the name of all that's holy is going on?"

Together we cornered the rabbit under Solange's desk. I was closest.

"Pick it up by the ears," Jack said.

"It'll bite me."

"Not if you hold it right," he said, and was gone.

"Rabbit," I said. "Nice rabbit." I wondered if, like dogs, it could smell fear.  "Solange would not like finding us in here."

Not even Gerhart, who I suspect shares Solange's bed on occasion, goes into her office without being invited.

I crept closer. I saw a watery image of myself slide across the rabbit's dark eye. The rabbit sprang. My fingers clamped around its ears. I pulled the rabbit out from under the desk and carried it down the hall.

The rex's front paws flailed uselessly. The powerful jabs of its hind legs only made it swing more wildly in my grasp.

"Sorry," I whispered and attempted to steady it with my other hand. The buzz of the rabbit's heart was electric against my palm.

"Sorry," I whispered again when I put the rabbit down in the room. There were dark red bruises where my fingers had held the ears. The rex scampered over to the scattered lettuce as though nothing had happened.

"Big help you were," I told Jack in the kitchen.

"Rabbits belong out in the wild. Best thing would be to let the lot of them go."

"Like where?  Central Park?  These rabbits couldn't survive on their own." I thought of the black angora. Sassy. Self-possessed. When it is not ricocheting madly from wall to wall, or leaping straight up into the air, it lies on its side like an odalisque, ears tossed back over its shoulders, back feet stretched far behind. It's never had a thought in its head of owls, or falcons, or coyotes.

"They'd still be better off."

I resisted the urge to punch Jack

Today I find the rabbits crouched along the baseboards and in the corners. Their ears swivel and tilt like furry antennas. The hare has claimed the closet for himself. He is busy combing his ears with his forefeet, but abandons his grooming as soon as he sees me. The hare loves to eat. If I let him, he will guard the bowl to keep the rest of the rabbits from the food.

I stand in the middle of the room. Slowly the rabbits gather at my feet. Their footfall is muffled by the heavy carpeting. The specially blended green Solange had Gerhard create for the rug is meant to make it look like spring grass. I wish that it were. For what it cost to have the rug custom-dyed, Solange could have had a real lawn installed.

I imagine men in stained overalls unrolling already growing runners of grass across the parquet, entomologists releasing the right numbers of worms and beetles to ensure aeration of the soil, botanists instructing me in the proper care and maintenance of the lawn. I picture myself mowing and raking inside a bedroom on the eleventh floor of an apartment building on Park Avenue. I imagine romping with the rabbits in our tiny meadow.

I tell myself that it's only in my presence that the rabbits affect the limping gait with which they approach their food bowl. I'd like to believe that once I'm gone, they fly across the room, the padding under the carpet boosting them like a trampoline.

I put down the water dish. The rabbits take short, delicate sips. I cannot help but notice that despite the vitamins the vet recommends, the rabbits are losing their luster. I wonder if it's because Solange had the rabbits neutered to prevent "reckless procreation" that they've gone so slack. The hare has gotten heavy. An apron of flesh hangs from the once graceful arc of its belly, and all but covers its long back paws.

The calico rabbit hunches up in the darkest corner of the room with its eyes closed. It no longer rolls around with wild abandon like it used to. The rex's eyes have gone the cloudy white of a cataract, and tufts of its fur drift around the room like tumbleweed. Its nose is dry. I know it's got to be a bad sign.

The angoras seem to be all right. The two white ones are loudly crunching the food pellets I mix in with the lettuce. The black one is nowhere in sight.

I check the closet. The hare fixes me with an unblinking eye.

I cannot remember when I last saw all three of the angoras. Maybe a day, maybe two ago. Maybe longer. I am not in the habit of counting the rabbits.

"Here rabbit, rabbit," I call softly, feeling like Elmer Fudd, as I search the apartment for some trace of the missing angora— stray droppings, chewed up electric cords or houseplants, or gnawed furniture.  I imagine it trapped somewhere behind a dresser in an unused room or a closet, but there is no smell of a putrefying carcass.

I check the rabbits' room again. The angora is definitely not there.

I confide in Jack. "I'm in deep trouble. There's a rabbit missing."

"Sweet Jesus, not again. You've got to be more careful girl. I can't be chasing rabbits with you every day."

"Not like the last time. I mean gone." I cannot imagine how it got out.

Jack scratches his stubbled chin with the handle of the special olive wood spoon he uses to stir the cast enamel pots. "You're not thinking someone took it?"

I nod.

Jack laughs. "Who'd want to do that?"

"Rosa."

"And what would she be wanting with a rabbit?"

"To eat it?"

"Don't be daft girl. Hers is a big family. A single rabbit wouldn't do them."

"Gerhard, then. To spite me. To get me in trouble with Solange."

"T'is true the man cares for you about as much as for a splinter in his eye."

"Or possibly someone who came to the house took it —because it was cute. Because it belongs to Solange."

Jack turns his attention back to the large enamel pot on the stove. I stop pacing and peer deep into the boiling brown broth.

"How do I know this isn't a rabbit ragout you're cooking?"

Jack laughs. "I had a pet rabbit myself once. Russet it was, like a new potato.  It had an unfortunate liking for the legs of kitchen chairs. Had to keep it in the bathtub. Ended up being taken away to the country."

"You must have been sad."

"Da swore he found the rabbit a right good home. Said it would get taken care of proper." Jack laughed again. "Lived to a ripe old age, I bet that rabbit did. Out there in the country. Same as chickens and pigs do."

"I'm going to have to tell Solange." I resume pacing between the stove and the nook  where the Ellsworth Kelly botanical drawings hang over a tiny bistro table.  Jack calls the nook his executive suite.

"Best not blame Rosa," he says. "Get the poor woman fired."

"Maybe Solange took the rabbit, made a present of it to one of her friends, and didn't mention it. You know the way she's always giving stuff away. Buys a t-shirt she likes in twelve colors. Donates ten of them to charity."

Jack grins in a way that makes me nervous. "Could be," he says without a bit of conviction. "Could be."

"Maybe she'll never even notice that the angora is gone."

"She will," Jack says. "When she's ready."

"It seems to me that she's losing interest in the rabbits." I notice that Jack does not contradict me. "Maybe by the time she does notice, it won't matter," I say, knowing that it will. The look Jack gives me confirms this.

"Luckily, it's not the rare one that's gone. Maybe I can replace it." Feeling suddenly tired and tearful, I sink down into the straw café chair in the nook.

A cookbook lies on the table. I open it nervously, as though I'm about to look at something forbidden.

Rabbit, to dress, the index entry reads. An image of the angora got up in sweater, hat, and shoes à la Beatrix Potter comes to mind.

To ensure tender meat, hang the rabbit by the feet for one to four days. It will be tender without hanging, if used before it has had time to stiffen. Once stiffened it is edible as long as the hind legs are rigid, but if the joint has become pliable discard the rabbit.

An illustration shows a rabbit, its hind hocks split by a large nail, hanging upside down. A pair of disembodied hands—gloved, as the text instructs, to protect them from tularemia—are pulling the rabbit's skin over the body and forelegs, turning it inside out. Dotted lines indicate where the front legs, head, and tail were to have been severed.

Pull in one movement. Discard the head with the skin. Next remove the entrails, except for the heart and liver, and discard. Begin by slitting three to four inches at the breast bone. Insert your hand and press the inner organs down out of the way as you continue to cut, turning the blade upward so as not to pierce the intestines. At the base of the gut cavity, near the hind legs, take hold of the large intestine and pull it out.

The remainder of the text is still more explicit. No illustration is required. I am sweating and retching even before I get to the part about storing the blood for use as sauce thickener. Left in the body cavity, the blood produces a fishy flavor the cookbook warns.

I run out of the kitchen to wash my face, my hands. I wish I could change my clothes. I feel like they smell unclean.

Solange, returned from one of her peddling expedition, calls to me as I leave the bathroom.

"Malvi, chérie, I must speak with you about the rabbits."

As always her voice is breathy, as though she's been running. But the rest of her is perfectly composed. Her hair—a grandmotherly white—is swept up into an elegant chignon in the style of Sargent's Madame X. Her eyes are the blue of a glacial lake. A very large, but simply set diamond suspended from a delicate platinum chain is her only adornment.

I swallow hard. "The rabbits?"

"Max, you know Max of course, le copain de Gerhart."

I nod, though I don't.

"A very talented performer. Over lunch today, he approached me about using the rabbits in a performance piece he's doing at the Naked Eye."

"That's way downtown," I say. It's the one thing I know for sure.

"Exactly!"  She doesn't embrace me, but I feel as though she has. "Max is a dear man. And I'm very fond of his art. I would very much like to help him. Especially since he is a friend of Gerhard." She kneads the diamond distractedly. "But what he is asking ... Vraiment,  it is not possible. Mes pauvres petits.  Imagine asking me to have the rabbits transported to the theater and back each day."

"It would be stressful."

"Cannelle, perhaps, could bear it. He's such a brute. Mais, the others—Anis, and Sel, and Sucre, and Chablis, and Pirouette— especially Pirouette—are so delicate, don't you think?"

"Very."

"Donc, it is decided. I will tell Max that the keeper of the rabbits will not permit the use of them."

Solange sweeps into her office, and I run back to the kitchen.

Jack is hunkered down in the nook over a large mug. As usual, it's filled with what looks like coffee, but smells like Scotch.

"Solange has named the rabbits," I tell him.

He shrugs. "People name their pets."

I find it hard to say exactly why the naming of the rabbits is so upsetting.  Maybe it's that their fate seemed less preordained when they were des lapins.   It hasn't escaped my notice that Solange calls Jack  Mr. Couteau. Gerhart of the spiky hair and personality to match is Artichaut. And Rosa, round and tart, is Cerise. Only I have no special name. Solange unfailingly calls me Malvi. For the first time, I'm glad

Jack clutches his whiskey-spiked coffee. Against the cobalt blue of the cup his skin seems an unhealthy yellow. "It's a christening party you were expecting, is that it?"

"With engraved invitations."

Jack merely smiles and toasts me with the cup.

I can't decide whether it would be more satisfying to smash it out of his hand, or to take a gulp. In the end, I just grab one of Solange's monogrammed pads off the table, and let myself into the rabbit room.

Once they realize that I have no food, the rabbits scatter and sink onto their haunches. I count them. One is still missing.

"You must be Cannelle," I tell the hare. I guess at Chablis and Anis.   One of the white angoras is undoubtedly Sucre, the other Sel. I wonder what Solange has named the other rabbits. Pirouette, I decide must be the missing angora.

With my back against the wall, I slide down onto the floor. Despite being specially made, the rug feels like plain old Astroturf against the back of my legs. A colossal waste of money. Just like the lap pool filled with mineral water out on the terrace that Solange has recently deemed too small for an adequate work-out. And the yoga room, which she is too busy to use. And the collection of faience, which she walks by without seeing.

Sun pours into the room from the bank of windows across from me. If only the light in my own apartment were as good. The lower sky has the faint green tint it gets when trees are budding. Over the sound of distant traffic, I hear birds twittering.

I sit with the pad propped on my knees, and try to compose an explanatory note that is concise, and clever, and devastating. Crumpled drafts, some with snippets from Derrida and Lacan, pile up around me like oversized spitballs.  The notes are snide and cold, worse than Solange deserves. She is not cruel.  Merely thoughtless. Unthinking.

Were it not for her, the rabbits would be prey, or stew. And Gerhart would be scrounging  to show his work in some unknown co-op gallery, and Jack would be living under a bridge,

and ... "Damn," I shout.

The rabbits take no notice. I watch their faces crease and uncrease as they work their noses the way toothless old men gum their lips. Backlit by the sun, their ears look as fragile as autumn leaves.

After I finish sobbing, I turn to a fresh page. I write the only honest thing that comes to mind.

          Dear Solange,

          A rabbit is missing. I am both glad and sorry.

          Sincerely,

          Malvi

          P.S. I quit.

On the way to Solange's office I pass Rosa turning down the quilt in the master bedroom.

"Buenas tardes," she calls out, and gives the pillow a half-hearted thump. She seems shrunken alongside the vast bed.

"Si," I smile and wave. "Have a good afternoon."

Gerhart's door is wreathed in cigarette smoke. I don't hear a single sound to suggest that he's working. I consider knocking, but then I imagine his sallow face glowering at me, and tiptoe past.

"Good luck, Artichaut" I whisper.

There is no slipping my note under Solange's office door. She's there, on the phone.

"That one is gone," I hear her say. After a pause, she continues. "Oui, of course that one was the very best, but there are others. They're also very good ... "

For a moment I think that she already knows about the rabbit. But no, it seems that it's the disposition of one of Gerhard's pieces that she's discussing.

Solange talks, and keeps on talking, and I shift from foot to foot unable leave, unable to stop listening. The longer I stay, the less sure I am of what she's talking about. Or whom.

I check my watch. It's time to feed the rabbits. I fold the note neatly in half, pocket it.

The apartment is almost empty. It is Rosa's afternoon off. Jack is gone too. I feed the rabbits and wait for Solange and Gerhard to embark on another of their all-night round of banquets and parties.

Once they leave, I slip into Solange's darkened office. It is the only room besides Gerhard's studio that I haven't searched. After fumbling for a while, I manage to turn on the sleekly sculptural desk lamp, which casts a narrow, but intense arc of bluish white light.

The office is smaller than I remember, and less opulent than I would expect. A single Stella adorns the white expanse of wall above the desk. It is a smooth, black chevron of monkish simplicity. I admire Solange for not having chosen one of the artist's later, flamboyant panels.

I lean across the desk to study it. Even up close, the surface looks glassine.  But under my fingers, the pigment is pebbly.

A sudden sound startles me. I stand frozen. I hear the sound again. It's a draft from the open door rustling the lacy philodendron alongside the desk.

I almost miss the dark shape curled around the base of the plant's thick green stalks.

"Hello Pirouette." When no one is around to hear me, I talk out loud to the rabbits. I didn't use to. I worry that it's a bad sign, that I will end up talking to sparrows and squirrels like that crumpled woman I see drifting around the park.

"How does the Stella look from down there?" The black angora doesn't perk up its ears and regard me attentively as is its habit, just lies there with its face cradled on its paws. Its lustrous eye have assumed the slant shape made immortal by Gauguin's Tahitian beauties.

Gently, I lift the angora out of the pot by the scruff of its neck. "Sorry to say, your little field trip is over," I croon. Its head hangs between its legs, a picture of remorse.

I carry the rabbit over to the desk. Its nose is not twitching. Its limbs lie inert.

Dead, but still pliable.

The rabbit's body is perfect. Not a mark on it.

I've never seen the angora look more beautiful. In the sharp light, its fur is a dark, dark brown, like burnished wood. Not black, as I thought. Its guard hairs are tipped with gold. Its thick, handsome ruff blazes like a halo around its head. I pet the angora's black snout just the way it liked. Close its eyes. Admire the satiny fringe of its long lashes. Its face wears a look of accomplishment.

With my finger, I trace the delicate slope of its jaw, stroke the soft hollow under its chin.

Something cool, and smooth, and slick brushes up against my skin. Bracing myself to find something verminous, disgusting, I part the thicket of fur. A gnawed remnant of a philodendron leaf clings to the angora's silky coat.

I am reminded of what the vet once told me. Rabbits can be trained to use a litter box, to respond when called, even to swim. But they cannot be trained out of their passion for gnawing.

I brush at the leaf, and it drifts slowly down onto the Abyssinian rug. Its serrated fronds blend with the carpet's angular geometries.

I cradle the rabbit hard against my chest. Turn off the light. Before leaving the room, I grind the poisonous philodendron leaf deep into the patterned pile. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, Rosa will vacuum it away.

Though my father had a collection of defensive armaments that ranged from a fourteen-ounce Kel-Tek .9mm—he called it "the pocket rocket"— all the way up to a really unattractive Kalatchnikov that could lay down enough firepower to waste a platoon (and apparently on more than one occasion had done so), my father's favorite offensive weapon was the simple 12-gauge shotgun. Mossbergs were his choice. They were inexpensive, simple to operate and came in a variety of styles that used the same reliable action.

"Dollface," he used to say. "It don't take much to gut an A-rab at ten feet. We're not talking marksmanship here. You want something that when you pull the trigger on one end from the other something goes boom."

Something went boom quite a lot, I was to learn, and not only in the vicinity of A-rabs. Daddy was unprejudiced to a fault. When he learned my lover through most of college was named Daood, my father simply called him Dave and overlooked the fact that Daood's own father was then a prominent member of the Palestinian Executive Committee. I guess he figured that if Daood was good enough to be at Brandeis, and was good enough for his daughter, he was good enough for Eddie Levine. Whatever personal qualms Dad had he never shared with me, though Mom told me once that, considering their own divergence of background, Daddy was just a little frustrated that he could not counsel against mixed marriages—his and Mom's had worked out just fine.

An ecumenical killer, my father fulfilled what he liked to call his "contractual obligations" with equal respect to Jews, Christians, Buddhists, animists and, on one occasion, a couple of troublesome Mormons an agency of the federal government had concluded were trading American secrets for French francs. The old man was often called in a case like this, where an outside contractor was best. Consider: if you were running an intelligence service you didn't want to destroy what little esprit de corps there was by asking people to do their friends; spooks were anything if not practical —even if you hated the person you erased you certainly would be stupid at some later date to risk parachuting into Honduras with his best pal and no witnesses. If doing it in-house was hardly an option, not doing it at all was worse. What exactly were the choices when a pair of American agents had been seduced by a friendly power—Britain, for instance?  You couldn't just throw up your hands;  that would be reward. Think of bucolic Buckinghamshire full of pensioned Yanks sticking out like big-spending sore thumbs. You couldn't simply fire them—there was no punishment in that; pretty soon everyone and his dog would start spying for friendly powers. And no bureaucrat in his right mind would risk the publicity that would result from bringing them to trial. For good or for ill, the US has no secret tribunals; with the Bill of Rights still in effect the only thing Washington can do is have them killed.

Though federal work paid well, it did not come along more than twice a year—Washington employed a lot more traitors than that, but preferred not to know they existed— and Daddy refused to do what he called "matrimonial," his term for the broad spectrum of private work.

"You're dealing either with amateurs—I mean, people who want their husbands knocked off; how lame is that?— or with the vowel-and-consonant crew: Your Vietnamese mafia, your Chinese mafia, your Russian mafia and, of course, your Mafia. They got so many people will pull a trigger for the fun of it, when they look to an outsider it's not a job you want to do. And almost always you're breaking the law."

For my father, this meant American law, and on the same theory he was equally reluctant about doing people in their own countries. Killing a Frenchman in France got everyone nervous—an examining magistrate with Napoleonic powers would be on the case immediately— but dropping a Frenchman in West Africa would take years to sort out, and in the end nobody cared. Daddy also did a lot of work for the Israelis, a business which started out of sympathy—he didn't take a cent for his first job; he said it was his donation to the Jewish National Fund— but over the years Middle East power politics became a major part of his business. Not only was Jerusalem involved in an endless dirty war that threw up targets on a weekly basis, but the Israelis came to trust my father and liked it that the other side feared death by shotgun so much they gave my father a name: Abu Hamsa, father of the five-shell repeater.

The truth is Daddy always chambered six—five in the internal magazine and one in the breach— though he rarely ever used more than two shells. Anyone who has seen what happens to a human being who has been gutshot only once will never even consider expending additional firepower: death by shotgun does not leave much more than hamburger. While one pull of the trigger almost always sufficed, Dad was a professional: he made sure.  "There is no such thing," he liked to say, "As pretty sure."

Then—with four rounds still chambered just in case he might run into opposition on the way out— Dad would tuck the gun under his coat until he was far enough from the scene to dispose of the piece. Usually this was in a sewer—there must be a hundred Mossbergs in the hands of Parisian sewer workers— or in a convenient river, lake or harbor.  Most every European city had been founded on a major body of water; within months the once shiny weapon would become little more than another unidentifiable bit of rust. Not that Dad trusted blindly in the elements: he always removed serial numbers before a job. There was never anything but his reputation to connect my father with the deed.

After Mom died—brain cancer, it happened quick; easier for Mom, but harder on us: one day she was there, then she wasn't— Dad got to be much closer to the Israelis, maybe because one of the guys he dealt with over the years, Mike Even-Zohar, came to the funeral and then visited every day for the seven-day mourning period. Dad was never moved by religion, but Mike's kind steadfastness impressed him. The man may or may not have had his reasons to want to turn a business relationship into a friendship, but it was clear to Dad and to me that in any business it's better to deal with friends.

Not long after Mom's death I began to learn more about what Daddy did. I was a senior at Brandeis then, and though my life revolved around Daood, coursework and a terribly irregular menstrual cycle, I was not stupid. I had for some time been aware that my father was not a business consultant. My brother Teddy, who was already in law school, must have been the first to figure it out, but he never told me. For all the drama, neither Teddy nor I—nor Mom for that matter— was any more affected by it than if Dad had been a cop or a fireman or a stunt extra in the movies: it was vaguely understood that what Dad did was risky, but that he was careful and always came back. Mom prayed a lot; she had married a Jew, but remained a Roman Catholic to the end. As in many such families where each parent's religion was too important to give up, for Teddy and me religion was meaningless. When the priest came to give Mom her last rites, both of us were uncomfortable. Our religion was practicality. The only thing I got out of it was Catholic high school, where I got a decent start on education.

For us the very idea of religion was as ambiguous and misleading as Dad's stationary, which read: Edward M. Levine, Executive Vice President, Project Planning And Execution, Ltd.  I was twenty-one before I got the joke, but by that time I was graduating from Brandeis. Teddy never wanted to work with Dad—my big brother was going to be another kind of assassin— so without much discussion Dad made me cards of my own: Virginia Levine, International Account Manager.  Not bad for a girl who had spent much of her life wondering if Daood had thrown me over because I was a Jew or because my tits were too small. Two months after graduation I was on the job.

•

To understand the way Daddy looked at things you had to understand where he came from: First off, his father had been a kosher butcher. Dad had grown up in the presence of corpses, what was once bellowingly alive hanging from a meat-hook in a freezer. I remember visiting Grandpa Lou's shop in Brooklyn as a little girl, and I can only guess at how growing up above the store affected Dad. Not that he talked about it much from what my teachers at Brandeis would call the existential point of view: in fact, he used to joke that he got into the game because he was jealous of Grandpa Jim, Mom's dad, who made a damn good living as an undertaker in Seattle. Grandpa Jim liked to joke about his profession as well: "It ain't spectacular, but it's sure."  No wonder that despite a serious difference of religious opinion they got along from the first.

The second thing to know is that Dad had been Special Forces in the highlands of southeast Asia. "The only Jew in that outfit," he liked to say, as though this traumatic dirty war had existed for the sole purpose of providing an opportunity  for a five-foot-six kid from Brooklyn to show up Iowa farmboys and Mississippi rednecks in the department of swashbuckling. Having been inured to fatality from childhood—Grandpa Lou had taught him early that death is just another part of life— and having learned to move beings from one part of life to the next in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Daddy returned to the US to take up employment with a government agency that was so far from Congressional scrutiny it might as well have been located on the moon rather than in a very pretty townhouse in Georgetown. By the time Teddy was born Dad's tie with the agency was contractual. He had acquired other clients and merely worked for the Georgetown organization one month a year as a consultant, training professionals in what he called "lone wolf" surveillance: no backup, no fancy technology, no preplanned cover. By the time I came along the organization itself had disappeared in a cost-cutting campaign that was meant to disguise the government's displeasure when the agency had fingered the wrong man in a rather infamous hit at a Norwegian resort: an Israeli team, going after the deputy head of Fatah terrorism in Europe, had managed to take out a Moroccan waiter.

Had the Israelis hit the right man, I would not have had Daood for a lover two decades later. The right man had been Ibrahim Al-Nabulsi–Abu-Daood, as he is called, once a terrorist, now a member of the Palestinian National Assembly, a man so politically flexible he would send his only son to Brandeis, whose student body is overwhelmingly Jewish.

A bridge-builder, a compromiser, a moderate—why, I had asked my father, would the Israelis want Abu-Daood  killed now, some twenty years after he had renounced terrorism to become the voice of Palestinian moderation?

•

Dad never saw himself as a killer. In his mind, and it was hard to argue, he was a soldier in civilian clothes, legitimate as any officer in the US Army or the French Foreign Legion or those gaudily dressed Swiss Guards who protected the Pope. "This is how it works in any army," he said. "They suit you up, train you, give you a weapon and send you out to do your worst.  Only difference with me is I don't need a uniform, I'm already trained pretty good, and I supply my own shootin' irons."

My father bought all his own guns. In his spare time he would get into the Volvo and purchase Mossbergs from gunshops all over the eastern seaboard—anywhere you could buy one over the counter no questions asked. And he never bought a gun in the same place twice. There was of course no way to trace any of Dad's guns; most were never even recovered. This was a man who carried extra shoelaces, who wouldn't have so much as a cavity filled without a second opinion, and who had hired a gardener to maintain Mom's grave in Maryland even though the cemetery was being well-paid for "perpetual care." 

Daddy was anything if not thorough, and he lived for the details. In his small workroom behind the offices of Project Planning and Execution in one of those glass and steel towers on Eye Street, Dad worked over every one of those Mossbergs himself. He shortened the barrels down to ten inches, replaced those long stocks with pistol grips, and then set to work overhauling the actions for a smooth trigger pull and a liquid release. Dad taught me how to do it—it was part of my apprenticeship— but even from childhood both Teddy and were comfortable around firearms. Dad had us target shooting when we could barely hold a kid-size .22. As we grew we graduated to pistols, everything from a Ruger Woodsmen to Colt Commanders chambered in .45, Daddy's old sidearm in the war. At the range my father favored in Virginia we were hardly the only children, but we were probably the only shooting family that had never eaten venison outside of a restaurant. Deer season meant only one thing to us: the range was less crowded; you didn't have to make an appointment. Dad had a soft spot for Bambi.

"I don't know why they're after Dave's dad, Gin, but I got to tell you..." He was working with a small convex file to deburr the end of a barrel where the saw had left its marks, and—perhaps for another reason— was not looking up. "Dollface, I told you what this business is. It's not Marquis of Queensbury. It's not about rules. You get a job, you do it. You understood that."  He looked up and found my eyes.

His own, in the workshop's bright lights, were tired. Normally an almost translucent blue, his pupils seemed sunken, hooded, dark, opaque. The cheerful ruddiness was drained from his cheeks.

"Daddy ... "

"In this business, dollface, you don't get to pick and choose. It's like the military. You can decline to do what they tell you to do, but you'll never have that chance again. The whole thing is based on doing what's required. Besides which, I don't know Dave's father from Adam, and you two haven't been together for over a year. A nice kid, but to tell the truth you've had boyfriends before and you'll probably have a dozen more. You got to understand this, Ginny."

"Daddy ... " I said again.

"Why don't you go to law school anyway?  This is no life."

"It works for you."

"Yeah, well," he said. "It's a living."

"And I could make a better one as a lawyer?"

"Teddy does all right," he said. "Look, dollface—"

"Daddy," I said. "I'm twenty-two years old and I helped you complete an assignment in London three weeks ago. Maybe I didn't fire a shot, but I helped."

"No question, dollface, you were a great help. Frankly, I don't know how I got along without you all these years."

"So will you stop calling me dollface?"

He looked away. "What, I can't call you dollface?  Who made you so grown-up your own father can't—"

Abruptly I took the finished barrel from his hand and examined the sawed end. He had missed a small burr on the underside. It wasn't much, but it paid to make sure. "The same person who taught me never to get closer than ten feet, because otherwise you run the risk of being spattered with blood. The same person who taught me to shoot before I could write my name. The same person who taught me that somebody has to do it, and that if it isn't you it'll be somebody who'll mess it up, that at least when you do it stays done."

"Yeah," he said, reaching for a paper towel to wipe the gun oil off his hands. "That's me."

"So don't treat me like a child. I never said don't do it. I never would say it. It's a job. It sent me to Brandeis. It sent Teddy to law school. So just don't make me into some whining child. Mike's people want us to delete Daood's father, we're going to do it. I'll do it if you want. What do I have to do to prove to you that I'm just not a little girl anymore?"

•

Mike Even-Zohar was one of the sexiest men I had ever known. A former colonel in the tank corps, he had been wounded in Lebanon—there was the hint of a limp and his smile seemed turned down on the right side— and then retrained and sent to Washington as deputy to the military attaché. As such he had become a permanent fixture in D.C. Four military attachés had come and gone in some ten years; Mike remained. What he did he did well. He and Dad were especially close. Not in the way of golfing buddies—neither was the type for golf— but in the way of professionals who admired the standards by which each lived and worked.

Mike had always liked me, to the point of outright flirtation when I was a teenager, but after Mom's death he became more reserved. Sometimes when I with another man, even when I was with Daood, I thought of him. But Mike was married, twenty years my senior, and smart enough not to risk his professional relationship with Dad for a moment of pleasure with me.

We were at dinner at an Indian restaurant on K Street. The food had never been very good, and the place was widely known to be overpriced—all in all a perfect spot. At 7:30 on a Thursday evening ours was the only table occupied.

"So it's a family business now, is it?" Mike said when the waiter disappeared.

"We've already got a lawyer," I said. "And my chemistry isn't strong enough for med school."

Mike winked. "Surely there are other professions."

Maybe, I thought, he does like me enough. "I always wanted to work with Dad," I said. "It gives me a chance to have dinner with you from time to time."

"And I remember when you had braces."

My father, who had been hanging back, now leaned forward. "And I remember what they cost. How're your kids, Mike?"

He took the hint and steered the conversation back to Dad. This was not unexpected. I was very junior; there were proprieties to be observed. After a while Mike drew a light-blue envelope, business size, from the inside breast pocket of his jacket. I noticed he had first to open a Velcro flap on the pocket, and then I noticed something else. Strangely, I had never seen it before.

Mike and Daddy were strangely alike, not physically in the details, but in demeanor, as lawyers act alike, and carpenters and cowboys. There was an efficient purposiveness in everything they did. No wasted motions, a clear look, and the need always to be sure: everything double-locked, checked twice, backed up. The envelope would contain photos, biographical material, late intelligence on what we could expect in terms of security—probably not much: Abu Daood had not had a price on his head for twenty years. He was a diplomat now. There would be a guard sitting outside his hotel-room door. The plan was typically Dad, simple, elegant, nothing wasted: Dressed as a hotel employee, I would bring the guard a cup of coffee with enough dusenol, an herbal laxative, to empty the bowels of a horse. In two minutes the guard would be desperately clawing at the hotel-room door. Dad, at the peephole of the room opposite, would go in after him, and I after Dad.  Boom boom, boom boom. Piece of cake.

The waiter brought our food, curry for Mike and myself, chicken tikka for Dad. The envelope sat on the table, but it hardly stood out. That's what I had noticed for the first time: the tablecloth and napkins were the same shade of light blue. God, I thought: there's so much I have to learn.

As if by agreement the two men did not speak until their plates were clean. I had given up on my curry and tried to be patient as they worked through their meals. One of the nice things about going back to London would be an improvement in the Indian food. I looked forward to it all. Dad always flew first class—"Cost of doing business," he used to say— and stayed in London at the same hotel, Brown's in Mayfair, where the staff was accustomed to receiving FedEx packages and holding them for Mr. Levine. Three of these, the disassembled Mossberg mixed in with a variety of formidable looking pieces of industrial steel and plastic, were ready for shipment, customs declarations already filled out: Factory samples, no commercial value.  We would buy a box of shells in Beaconsfield, just outside London, over the counter, no identity check.

"Why would you want to take out a politician?" my father asked. "Old grudge?"

Mike looked at him. In all their dealings, Daddy had probably never asked that simple question—why?  "Why?"  Mike repeated.  "Because that's what I'm ordered to do. I don't ask. You never did."

"A fucking politician," my father said.

"Daddy ... "

"Shut up, dollface," he said, then turned back to Mike. "What is it, next time you'll want a librarian, or an accountant?  For Chrissake, Mike, are your people nuts?"

"Could be they are," Mike said, casting me a look that said, Help me here—your father isn't playing the game. "All the information you need is in the envelope. Should you require more, just ask. We want you to succeed, Ed."

"Fuck you," my father said.

"Daddy!"

"And you shut up. Just sit there and shut up."  He picked up his fork and delicately pushed the envelope several inches toward Mike. It sat there until the waiter came to clear off.

"Is everything satisfactory?" he asked in that deferential-to-the-rajah tone. "Something for dessert, please?"

"The food sucks," Daddy said. "And it's overpriced.  And we won't be having dessert. Just prepare a check but don't bring it until I ask."

I found myself staring at the waiter's back as he went away. And then I heard Mike's voice. It was a sweet voice, really, a mellow baritone with light inflections. It went with his sandy hair.

"Ed," he said, starting slowly, clearly intent to keep a lid on. "This is a very serious matter. We've been working together for a good long time, haven't we, and we've been friends almost since then. If there's something wrong I'd like you to tell me. You know as well as I that this business is not one in which we have a great deal of choice."

"Don't tell me my business."

"Ed, as much as I like and respect you, once you're out, they won't let me use you again."

My father shrugged. I had never seen him do that. It was childish, innocent, stubborn. After a moment, he seemed to soften.  "You're a good man, Mike. It's not personal to you."  He looked to me, then back. "It's just ... ."

A month later somebody made an attempt on Abu-Daood, a letter bomb. The target was nowhere near, but his secretary was badly torn up. The papers speculated it was the result of some sort of inter-Arab rivalry —hard-liners intent on destroying the moderates just before yet another Israeli-Palestinian summit. In our hotel bed, Mike confided to me he expected Jerusalem had cooked it up to keep the Palestinians fighting amongst themselves, but even he wasn't sure. You could never be sure with something like that.

The affair was brief, intense, then moody, then done.  Daddy closed the office on Eye Street and took up golf. He played every day, even sometimes in the rain. He invited me once or twice, but it was no use. I kept seeing him as we stood outside that Indian restaurant.

"I was at your wife's funeral," Mike had said. It was as close to imploring as he would get.

"I'll go to yours," my father said, and then he took my arm and led me away like a little girl.

When Rachel moved to Brooklyn, she hadn't expected the quiet. Cities are noisy, bustling, full, she'd thought. Philadelphia had been. In moving from one place to the other, she had anticipated a giant upgrade in volume by way of car alarms, wailing horns, and slurring scuffles outside bars keeping her forever perched at the very brink of sleep. And from her third floor walk-up on the corner of two cross-streets, she could see those sounds through the glass—could watch the cabbie's fist shake through a rolled-down window, or the bouncer at the burlesque bar pull two clumsy stumbling men apart. But on sidewalks, Rachel keeps her face pointed forward and her hands buried in coat pockets, knowing none of this noise belongs to her.

At one month in, still a transplanted seedling, rootless, she can count just one face to call friend—Luke, who she met at a company happy hour that first week working. Seemingly the only other 20-something amid clusters of middle-aged women gushing about their kids' school plays or how John Travolta never seems to age, they'd been each others' easy alternative and had gone out several times since. But Rachel—who was not Luke's only, as he was hers—was careful not to rely too much, to wear out welcome, to need—aware that his sounds also did not belong to her yet, that there were no sounds to call theirs.

On today's walk home from the subway, Rachel clamps her phone shut without leaving Luke a second message. Several days ago they'd made plans to see an art house flick just out, but he hadn't confirmed since getting sick mid-week. Had he lost interest already, she wonders, just a few weeks in? Would he say so if he had? Was this a budding relationship, or something less significant? Was Rachel overestimating their compatibility? Coming off desperate in her new-city loneliness?

After sliding her phone back into her purse, she adjusts her grasp around the grocery bag in her other hand. Suddenly she is startled at the sighting of a different face— not Luke's, but one out of context from another city, an unexpected past. It's a jarring distraction that quiets these questions, however momentarily. A mirage, maybe? She squints towards the figure across the street and still can't tell.

Is it? Rachel puzzles, thinking, No, it couldn't be. Wanting to find out for sure, she crosses Vanderbilt at on a long diagonal to come at the figure straight from behind. It's not until she raps a fist dun duh-dun against the scaffolding that Wes's slouchy beanpole body shudders and takes notice of her standing there.  "Hello," she says.

"Whoa," says Wes, his eyes bright but framed by half-moons of sunken darkness. "What the ... ?"

"I live over there," she points.

"Since when?"

"A little over a month ago?  I work in the city now."

"That's awesome," he says, taking one last long drag off his Marlboro before stomping it out on the sidewalk. He's wearing a t-shirt Rachel remembers, thinks she might have purchased, even. Only now it hangs more loosely off his bones.

"What about you?" she says. "I thought I'd heard you were on tour."

"That ended in August. I was just a hired guy. But I'll probably do some studio work for them down the road."

"Huh," she says. "So you moved here too?"

"Well, I was staying at Mike's—you remember Mike—but now his girlfriend's knocked up and fixing their place for a baby."

"Huh," says Rachel, recalling that the last time she saw Mike, his dizzy squinted face huffed from a stainless steel whipped cream can, swiped from the restaurant where the boys all bussed back then.

"In-between things again," Wes says, nudging the camouflage-patterned messenger bag at his feet with the toe of his sneaker. "I auditioned for a few gigs, but it's all random shit—nothing I'm excited about." A hand in his pocket emerges with a cell phone he begins flipping open and shut, open and shut. "Not that I'll hear back anyway, with this thing dead."

"You can't charge it?"

"I forgot my charger at Mike's."

"You can't go back and get it?"

"Not 'til after the weekend. Unless you wanna do some fire escape climbing with me?"

"Not particularly," Rachel says. "But we've got the same brand if you want to use mine."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah.  I'm headed back now to eat if you're hungry, too," she adds nonchalantly but knowingly. And though his widened eyes expose him, Wes, as always, plays the situation off real cool and casual, says "OK, yeah," like maybe he's just had dinner but sure, why not, he'll eat again. When he moves to grab his bag from the ground, he leans towards the pavement like an old man would, like his bones are stiff and crackable. With one palm flat against the cement, he pauses, taking a breath before pushing himself up, slow and straight.

When Wes steps through the doorway into Rachel's studio apartment, she watches his eyes hop from one point to another, seeing each of her belongings differently then, through his eyes, through every object's connection to him, and to them. His eye line darts from the same black and white print of the girls in the museum she's always had hanging, to the mountain of dirty laundry in the corner he knows she'll procrastinate against for another week despite its glaring urgency, to the small paper shopping bag hanging by its handles from a bedpost where he knows she keeps the condoms within easy reach, to the ancient paisley-patterned quilt that once covered Wes's body, too. He steps to the center of the room, drops his messenger bag to the floor beside his feet. "Your own place," he says, crossing his arms and smiling like a proud father might.

"Yup," Rachel tries to say, but the word emerges froggy and hoarse, blocked by a bubble in her throat needing to be cleared, which she does.

"It's nice," he says, moving towards the crooked shelf built into the wall, prompting Rachel to remember the poetry anthologies she pilfered a year and a half ago—two books or was it three—from the sad fat garbage bag of Wes's belongings with the wire hanger hooks piercing through. She hopes his eyes won't fall on them as he runs an index finger across the spines from left to right, grazing each, either not noticing or pretending not to. Or forgetting.

"Hungry?" she asks.

He turns, startled. Says, "Alright."

Dinner is not much of a dinner, just tuna salad with a chopped-up dill pickle mixed in the way they both like on whole wheat bread, which Rachel prefers and Wes does not. They eat on the narrow secondhand loveseat across from her bed—plates on laps, an open bag of potato chips between them—challenging each other to find something better on TV than the Chris Farley/David Spade movie that's been repeating all week on a cable channel. When they're done eating, Wes places Rachel's empty plate on top of his and disappears into the barely-separate kitchen. She stays seated, face pointed at the TV screen, shoving thin stacks of potato chips between her teeth. It is getting late and still no call from Luke. Rachel picks up her phone to the faint sound of plates clinking against glass and the even fainter static sound of water running. Thinking it'd be stupid to call again, she deliberates over the right cheery, casual-sounding words to text. "Feeling any better? Plans tonight?" seems simple, unloaded. She presses Send.

A minute later the phone vibrates to signal a reply. "Still sick," the message reads. "Call you tomorrow." Rachel's eyes scan the words, the letters, the pixels, for buried meaning until a throat being cleared breaks her trance. "So," Wes says, hands propped on hips. "What's next?"

Rachel places her phone on the coffee table. "Well," she says. "My plans for tonight just got cancelled."

"Cancelled by who?"

"No one."

"No one?"
"Yup."

"What's he like?"

"Who?"

"Your boyyyfriend," Wes says in the teasing voice of a third-grader.

"Shut up."

"Is it?"

"What?"

"Your boyfriend."

"I guess."

"Why's he canceling plans with you?"

"He's sick."

"Oh no."

"Shut up."

"What's he like?"

"I'm not telling you."

"Is he nice? Is he cute? Does he drive a cool caaar?"

"Wes, where are you sleeping tonight?"

"What?"

"Where are you staying?" Rachel insists. "If not with Mike?"

"I don't know. Nowhere."

"Where've you been sleeping?"

"In my car."

"For how long?"

"I don't know. Like three days?"

"Wes, you can't just do that."

"Dude. It's no big deal. It's been nice out."

"It's not safe."

"Aw, come on. Nobody messes with me."

"Yet."

"You think somebody's gonna mess with this? Look at me. Come on. Hey, look," he says, puffing his cheeks with air, flexing his spaghetti-thin muscles, and pacing stiff like Frankenstein towards her. "Huh, Rach? You wanna mess with this?"

"You're stupid."

"Oh, girl, I know you didn't just say that," he says, bouncing closer towards the loveseat in a mock kangaroo fighting stance. Then, in an exaggerated flash, his arm swings up and around Rachel's neck into a loose headlock, and knowing the response he's aiming for, she refuses to struggle or shriek. "How you like me now?" he whoops.

"Wes," she says dryly.

"Mister Wes."

From the crux of his elbow, she repeats, "Mister Wes."

"You may speak."

Rachel hears the sentence in her head, and before saying it out loud she tries to think of one dumber thing she's done, not counting during college. "If you need to crash here tonight, you can," she hears herself say.

Wes abruptly releases his hold and steps back to smile. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. But only tonight. And we sleep head-to-toe. Okay?"

"Aw, dude. See?" he laughs. "People know better than to mess with this."

Having forever-penniless Wes around for the night is a weirdly vivid flashback to the year before Rachel finished college, the couple's collectively empty pockets forcing happy brainstorms for full weekends on the cheap—of riverside park picnics and coffee shop wandering, checking out bad bands at two-dollar beer bars with friends they'd follow to cramped house parties to double-fist until the keg went dry. Other times they'd stay home instead, examining corners of nightstand drawers for dried-up bits of weed to gather with a moistened fingertip and flick into a chipped glass pipe. Afterwards they'd collapse dazedly into the corner of the couch, their bodies curving under a blanket like two warm hands cupped together, to babble about parental slip-ups that left deeper scars than expected, or what physically happens within the human heart during a favorite song's big build-up, or how in ten years they hoped and believed that everything might stay exactly the same as it was then at that single sleep-soft moment.

Which it didn't, of course, and couldn't have. The earth spins and pushes people forward, away from what they never meant to leave behind. Degrees get finished; bands break up; private worlds' seams start splitting when a rent notice arrives with "Past Due" stamped thick and red. Next to a basement beer pong table, two blue plastic cups sway and spill as Rachel yells about three months of fronted rent not yet repaid. Wes slams a fist through plaster during a circled speech about promises kept, not broken. And when Rachel's new job pays double the one Wes must quit to go on a tour that could be his big break but probably isn't because the last one wasn't, nor the one before, there is no shouting—just a tense, sad quiet that stretches from wall to wall like a spider web, trapping every word unsaid to hang there stuck, and slowly decay.

Tonight Wes tugs a small plastic bag filled with fuzzy green buds from his messenger bag and dangles it in the air between their faces.

"Whoa," says Rachel, breathing in the skunky scent. "How do you have this but not a place to sleep?"

"I found it in my car today," Wes says proudly, pulling a lighter and packet of rolling papers, both orange, from the bag's same pocket. "Wanna?"

Wes's nimble twig fingers fold and twist the pinched bits of green into a joint so smooth and tight it looks like a factory-produced cigarette in miniature. This talent, coupled with his ability to parallel park his grandmother's hand-me-down Buick into any seemingly too-small space on a dare, were the first things she found impressive about him four years ago. Wes places the joint between Rachel's fingers and ceremonially bows his head.

When she finally exhales, a long gray cloud creeps eerily across the coffee table where her cell phone sits. As the smoke dissipates, she considers that chicken soup delivered might have been a better response to Luke's text message than inviting her ex-boyfriend to stay the night. "Shit," she says.

"Right?" says Wes, his voice clenched to hold the smoke in his lungs. "We're gonna need snacks."

After a few more back-and-forths, Rachel whispers to Wes that she has an idea, but stay there, don't follow her into the kitchen, just find something good to watch on TV. Dizzily, she scampers away to ferret through cabinets whose doors she leaves ajar, lining up ingredients across the countertop and humming a meandering melody, like a mad scientist suddenly possessed.

"What're you up to in there?" Wes says, stretching across the bed to peer sideways into the kitchen.

"Don't come in!" she shouts back. "It's a surprise." And to the tune of mindlessly shuffled-through channels, Rachel adds the chirping bleeps of microwave buttons pressed—the sing-song signal of completion drawing out a big finish. "Are you ready?" she says finally, pacing slowly towards the coffee table, cabinets still open behind her, the countertop littered with jars and bags and boxes. With both hands she balances and presents the plate like the bearer of a lit-up birthday cake. "Ta da," she says.

"Are those S'mores?"

"Yes," she says, standing beside them. "And I put peanut butter in them, too."

"No way."

"I did."

"Dude," says Wes, grabbing one and shoving a fat half of it into his mouth. Speaking through the gooey chocolate ooze that drips from the sides of the graham cracker sandwich, he adds, "You are a magical fairy of awesome."

"I know," she says, sitting next to him on the edge of the mattress, grabbing one for herself. "I also brought, like, four hundred napkins, knowing what a slob you are."

Somehow, at quarter-to-midnight, that same Chris Farley/David Spade movie is the only thing on even remotely worth watching. Without turning away from the television, Rachel peels back the covers from her end of the bed and slides underneath them as Wes gobbles up the last of the S'mores. "You sleepy?" he says.

"Kind of."

"We can finish this thing and pass out if you want," says Wes, leaning across Rachel's blanketed calves to reach the lighter and last third of the joint on the table between their phones, which Rachel decides look like two cars parked in a driveway next to a S'more platter house.

"Okay."

"Camping?"

"What?"

"Come on. You remember," Wes says, and lifts the quilt up and over their heads so they're both huddled beneath what looks like a tent to trap the smoke inside and around them. Rachel can't see his face until she hears the lighter's gear scrape and flick, and then there he is, illuminated as if by campfire glow.

Wordlessly, they pass the joint back and forth until it's kicked, at which point they both flop back onto the mattress, head-to-toe, as agreed. Rachel sets the sleep timer on the TV to shut off when the movie is over. Her brain feels like it's spinning inside her head like a globe. She shuts her eyes to slow it and turns away from the TV, towards the wall instead, and towards the shadowy blanket bumps where Wes's lanky legs must lie. A few minutes later, with a small shift nearby, those same small mountains slide away, moving to gently rest themselves warm against the skin of her legs just below the knee. The offer of sleep floats up in waves from the mattress. Our legs. They're touching, she thinks, sighing softly.

In the morning, after showering, Rachel dresses in the bathroom, hips and elbows bumping every wall in the too-cramped space. When she steps out, her hair is damp beneath a towel turban and she feels too bashful to look at Wes, wondering if he'd chuckled at the thuds against the door.

But he's too immersed in the computer screen to have noticed anything. Rachel watches his fingers piano their way across the keyboard. "Whatcha doing?" she asks, leaning back against the bed to pull a sock over her foot, which is still pink and puffy from the steamy water.

"I'm talking to Don. Remember Don?"

"Of course," she says, recalling the drugged-out chef with the Marilyn Monroe tattoo whose parties weren't so bad.

"He says he knows these West Coast dudes looking for a drummer, and that I can crash on his couch as long as I need to." Wes's knees bounce up and down, and his expression asks permission to be fully enthusiastic. "If I leave this afternoon I can make it to Philly in time to catch their showcase tonight."

"What kind of music?"

"Some kind of emo, post-punk thing? But legit. Don says not lame. And they're signed, so."

"Huh."

"Cool, right?"

"Yeah. Worth checking out at least."

"That's what I said. And even if they suck, I'll just crash with Don for a while, find something else."

Wes's wide eyes wait for her to confirm the ingenuity of this idea, which sounds to Rachel like an exact replica of every other idea he's had before that failed. "Sounds like a plan," she says.

Wes laughs in that "heh-heh" way that boys do when they think they're getting away with something. Then he stands and stretches his arms into the air. His fingertips press dents in a ceiling tile. "You hungry?" Rachel asks.

"Eh."

"We could get brunch before you leave," she says, adding, "My treat. To celebrate."

"Okay," he grins. And they go.

Wes is working on a second platter of waffles when Rachel lays her fork to rest across an empty plate. They are both quiet—him focused on chewing, and her stealing glances at other tables of chattily hungover brunch-goers, groggily rehashing last night's events with those who are to blame for them. Rachel sips from a tumbler of grapefruit juice and puzzles over this city so devoid of her own personal history, like blank pages in a newly-bought notebook. She likes this restaurant because—given that it's Luke's favorite brunch spot—it's the only neighborhood building aside from the grocery store that's become comfortably familiar. "I'll have the usual," she imagines herself saying, having it understood by a waiter, by Luke.

By Luke.

And there he is, as suddenly as he came to mind—the cowlick at the back of his head, his blue track jacket with the scuff on the sleeve—walking up the aisle from the restaurant's back veranda, headed towards the cashier by the door, a girl trotting close behind him. Not with him, though, Rachel thinks, and repeats in her head. Not with him. Just headed to the register, too.

They stop to stand there. The guy who is definitely Luke hands a wad of bills to the cashier and laughs at something the girl or the cashier has said. The cashier, Rachel thinks. Something he has said. And then the girl, pretty and plain, turns to face Luke, to look at him. In slow motion, her thin rail arm rises, and her fingers settle at the nape of his neck to fork their tips into Luke's hair and massage small circles against his scalp. She steps closer so their hips are almost touching.

Luke offers a palm to the cashier for his change, shoves it into his beaten-up wallet, and slides it into his back pocket. Then he looks at the girl—at her, at her— and slyly swoops his arm around her lower back and guides her towards the door, which he leans forward to open, to let her step through first.

And then they are gone.

Rachel remembers to breathe. At the table, Wes pours long-stretching drips from the pitcher of maple syrup, snickering.

"What's so funny?" Rachel says.

"Huh?"

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing," he says. "Eating waffles."

"I'm not buying you any more after that."

"I know," he says, meeting her stare sheepishly, as the waitress appears in their peripheral to place the check next to Wes's napkin. The intensity of her smile is apparent in her voice when she asks if she can get them anything else.

"We're fine," Rachel says, breaking what will turn out to be the last matched gaze between them. She snatches the check and looks over the mess of numbers without seeing anything. "I'm gonna go pay this, and I'll meet you outside," she says, bumping her hip against the table's edge as she stands to grab her purse from the back of her chair. "Okay?"

"Okay."

After paying, Rachel fidgets underneath the restaurant's front awning. She squints towards the north and south sides of the street, knowing full well that Luke and the girl would be out of range by then. She wishes for a cigarette, envious of smokers' easy excuse to step away from the unfaceable and into the chill air, with something to fiddle between fingers, to clamp between lips and focus breaths around.

Finally Wes steps onto the sidewalk, adjusting the strap of his messenger bag around his chest. Rachel feels his eyes on her but does not look up. "I guess I'm gonna hit the road," he says.

"Okay."

"Thanks for brunch. And for letting me crash."

"No problem."

"It was good seeing you."

"You too," she says, staring down at her middle fingernail as it flicks against her thumb. "Good luck in Philly."

"Thanks," he says, stepping forward to wrap thin arms around her in a firm hug that lasts slightly longer than Rachel wants it to. The metal buckle at the front of the bag's strap presses cold against the exposed skin just below her neck. "See you later, Rach," he says, stepping away.

"Bye," she says. "Drive safe."

"I will," says Wes, holding up a flat palm and half-smiling as he turns to walk in the opposite direction from Rachel's apartment. She turns, too, shoves her hands deep into her coat pockets, and points her face towards home, not caring for the closure of watching Wes's thin body diminish in size with the increasing distance between them.

A small gray cat in Sean's snow fort is exploring the carefully pounded tunnels that have hardened in the cold. Her steps are hesitant, testing the whiteness to be sure it won't swallow her up. Moira wonders what the boys will make of tracks in their domain. It wouldn't surprise her if they resented this trespass. These days her sons are fiercely territorial. Comings and goings—no matter how routine—make them suspicious. Moira let the pizza delivery boy come in out of the snow while she fetched her wallet and they got upset about it. When she was late getting back from the supermarket, Michael was close to tears.

Moira shouldn't be cat watching. Her rightful post on these rare days when she can work at home is at the front window to watch for Sean and Michael returning from school. She glances at the kitchen clock, scolds herself for losing track of time, and moves into the living room to wait by the window.

She hears the boys before they're in sight. Sean is calling Michael's name as if it were a slur. Their animosity is indefatigable. Neither can find anything worthy in the other. She used to wonder whether she and Ken might have alleviated the boys' disharmony had they waited another year to have Michael, or perhaps had him a little sooner. But they went by the book—as many as they could find—the majority of which suggested three years' difference was ideal.

The parenting books serve them even now. They've agreed the boys will live here with Moira. Minimize change, the books say, minimize. That's the trick. And tell them together. So they did. Right here in the living room. Moira in the rocker, Ken on the piano stool with Michael, Sean on the floor as if their father were about to read them all a favorite passage from Huckleberry Finn. Civilized. Almost cozy. An all-for-one-and-one-for-all sort of approach to the business of destroying lives. Except that Michael received the tidy news looking as if his parents had just removed his insides and Sean hasn't looked at either of them since.

As the boys come into view, Moira notices that Michael is not wearing his wool hat. He has lately adopted his older brother's defense against the cold: Act tough and you won't feel it. She opens the door, determined to say nothing about hats. Sean is out of his backpack and into his room before Moira can make contact. Michael sits on the stairs and presents her his foot to remove his boot. Pleases and thank yous have no part in this ritual. He's the son of a long line of Irish mothers and he knows his rights.

He slides across the hardwood floor in his socks, digs a game out of his toy closet, and brings it to his mother to play with him. He does this now whenever she works at home, ever since he learned that his parents are going to separate. No more heading straight for the video games; he wants contact, closeness, as if he senses that such intimacies are finite and theirs may be all but used up. At bedtime he asks for songs again now, the ones his mother sang to both of them when they were small, the ones her mother sang to her. Moira can't remember stopping the songs; they just weren't part of things after a while. She sings them these days in a whisper so that her voice won't crack. They are songs from Dingle and Kilgarvin, sad, meant to be sung by women who don't break easily, like her mother, a rock-solid, no-nonsense doer of whatever has to be done. Moira is very much her mother's child. She rarely fails to do what's required or hesitates to say what must be said. Ken has told her there are times when hesitation may be a virtue, but she can never sense them.

The game is Parcheesi today. They set it up on the coffee table. Moira sits on the couch; Michael is on the floor. His little figures leap over hers in a jerky, painstaking effort to reach home, thwarted repeatedly by the unfriendly way the dice fall. Moira moves her pawns randomly, forgetting which direction will take her home, trying to catch snips of talk from the radio amid Michael's constant chatter. When she drifts too far, he takes her chin in his hand and turns her head to look at him.

"I'm green," he says. "You're blue."

"Yes, I know," she tells him.

"You're moving my greens."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says and tries to undo the damage.

"You don't want to play."

"Of course, I do. Let's start again."

Michael's face changes and he sinks from his kneeling position and onto his bottom. He rests his head on his arm stretched across the game board. Listless, he begins to flick the pawns away like little marbles. Moira rests her hand on his to keep him from doing it, and he looks at her, his eyes filling with tears. She is struck by how difficult it is to love a child, how scary. Even when the boys were infants, she feared she wasn't doing it right. Their tears and sadness were mysteries to her, haunting tests. She would pick them up, soothe them, change them, rock them, put them to her breast, never sure of what might work. And when something did, the quietness that followed seemed like a deception, a temporary cover for a stubborn riddle that would never be solved.

Moira holds her arms out to Michael, invites him to her. He leaps up, eager for her. She relies on him to know what he needs. Her embrace comforts him, but she feels a bizarre responsibility to tell him this is not the answer, that being strong is the only sure protection. Still, there is something in his surrender that pulls at her, makes her wish she could do the same. Sean once had that kind of effortless trust in her embrace, but he stiffens now, holds back. Her mother, too, reacts that way when she hugs her. Moira can't remember when she first came to expect this from people, this discomfort, even from Ken.

The garage door opens, the car pulls in and Michael jumps from her lap. His father, his second helping, has arrived. Before Ken can put down his books, Michael attaches himself, his arms fast around his father's waist. Ken bends to hold him and they tumble to the floor, land among the micro machines and Parcheesi pieces. Moira can barely stand to watch. Their horseplay makes her uneasy. It seems artificial, inappropriate, like cast members partying after a flop.

Ken gets up, moves toward his wife for their greeting. The cold clings to his coat, the skin of his face. There's ice in the crevices of his shoes. Their greetings have continued unchanged, the barest brush of cheeks, a hand on a forearm, no more than the resigned meeting of two losing teams.

Moira tells him she wants to check on Sean, although mostly she wants to escape Michael's dissecting stare. The boy wants to uncover what's changed about his parents now that they don't love each other, but the way they treat each other now seems no different from when he thought they did. He wants to know what to look for, he says, when they stop loving him too. Love isn't an action, Moira consoles; it's a feeling. You can't see it. Then how do you know, he pleads, how do you know for sure that someone loves you? You can't, she wants to say, but of course she doesn't. She tells him that real love—the kind a mother and father have for their children—is forever. She doesn't mention that her own father let decades go by uninterrupted by a word to his children, never knowing where they were or who they became, or that her mother has shut herself away in an apartment for nearly twenty years, avoiding her children, as if they could never be anything more to her than fellow escapees, reminders of a time that will never be over for her, not when they're around.

Moira finds Sean upstairs in his room. He hasn't taken off his bomber jacket. He lies on his bed, hands tucked behind his head, examining the ceiling like a pilot just down from a long, lonesome flight. She can hear his music despite the headphones. Sean, she says, knowing he won't hear her. She moves toward him and his face changes, hardens. He blames her. The matter is a very simple one, as he sees it, with a simple solution: Leave things the way they are. But they've passed that point. Ken has found an apartment. Tomorrow he'll move out. The idea of separating, once spoken, took on a relentless momentum, like a force long suppressed. She finds herself thinking of how she'll miss Ken's sweaters, the wonderful length and looseness of them. His physical absence is something her mind cannot grasp yet. She cannot see what an ordinary day will be like. Waking without the smell of his early morning coffee; no longer searching for his keys at night so that he won't be late getting out the next day. She fears instead that there will be no more ordinary days, only long stretches of loneliness, of wondering what went wrong.

Sean doesn't ask what went wrong. The night his parents told him they couldn't live together anymore, his face expressed his contempt for them, as if their decision were the consequence of some adolescent snit, some phase that would pass if they didn't insist on making so much of it.

Moira sits down on his bed and he shifts his weight just enough to avoid contact. "How was school?" she asks. He pulls one headphone away from his face and she asks again.

"Okay," he shrugs. It's clear that talking to his mother is a dreary routine for him, like brushing teeth, one he must repeat and repeat so as not to break the rules.

Ordinarily, at this point, Moira asks him to remove his headphones, but today she can't. Today his distance is more than she can traverse. She crosses to the window, leaving him to travel the ceiling.

The snowdrifts cast deepening shadows in the yard, morphing into mountains in some great expanse of impassable wilderness. As if on cue, something in the fort moves, a gently gyrating tip of a tail surfacing above the edge of a rampart. "Look," Moira tells Sean. "It's that cat." He lifts his headphones, knowing she's said something, but not sure what. "It's a cat. There's a cat in your fort."

He gets to his feet, stands near her to see for himself. The cat settles into the place it's made for itself on Michael's woolen Giants cap. They can see that it's small, only a kitten. "Can I keep her?" he says.

"Keep her? What do you mean?"

"Can I keep her?" he repeats impatiently.

Moira is surprised at the request, although she doesn't know why she should be. The boys have asked for dogs and cats before. She and Ken have never given in. "She's a street cat. You'll never be able to catch her."

"If I catch her, can I keep her?" Sean's voice is flat, no trace of childish excitement or anticipation. Just an arbitrator, negotiating terms.

"We'll see what your father says," she tells him, realizing at once how ridiculous that sounds now that his father will be leaving.

Sean makes a noise, like a laugh but not a laugh, and turns away from her. In a heartbeat, he's pounding down the stairs to the back door. From his window, she watches him move across the deck and down the steps in a slow motion trek toward the curled up cat. Moira wants to call to Michael, so that he can watch his brother, but she finds herself paralyzed by the suspense of it, the slow, steady progress of Sean's determination. At last at the fort, he stops. And just when she's sure he'll make a grab for the animal, he does nothing. The cat raises its head, stares. Moira cannot see Sean's face, cannot tell whether he is talking to it or just staring back. She waits, finds herself as eager as a kid for him to keep the cat from getting away. Sean reaches out to the animal, and she watches him with the same feelings of powerlessness and hope that she has when he's on the mound, when there's a full count and the next pitch has to be right. The cat lies still as Sean's fingers settle behind its ear, and the breath Moira's been holding comes out in a childish laugh.

She rushes downstairs. At the closet by the back door, she stops and grabs her coat, calling, "Michael. Put your coat on. Come out back."

There's a delightful madness in it. Moira tries to help Michael get into his tangled coat, but he races out to the deck, one sleeve dangling. Ken rushes after them to see what's going on. Sean has the cat on his lap, stroking its back. Moira and Ken stand watching him. "Can we keep it, Mom?" Michael cries.

Sean looks up at his mother, sullen, expecting the worst. "The last thing I need is one more thing to take care of," she says, which seems as good as a yes to them, because Michael runs down to the snow fort, settles down next to Sean, slipping a hand against the cat's fur. Moira and Ken follow him down.

"If you keep him, you better have a vet check him out," Ken says. He stands nearer to Moira. She is not used to this closeness. His breath is visible as he speaks and she finds something oddly intimate about the sight of it, something she no longer has a right to see. She watches the side of his face. His profile is perfect, like a façade on a studio's back lot. His features are still handsome, but his expression is closed off. He's a man who is never taken unawares. He smiles down at the boys, remembering something maybe. She can't tell. There's no joy in the smile. "I like your fort, guys."

"I made it," says Sean, quickly laying claim to the praise.

"Michael must have helped some," he says, and Moira watches his breath escape again, dissipate into the cold. She remembers a younger face, a time when they were inseparable, each certain of how the other one felt, brazen in the safety of it. At every chance, they'd wrap into one body, one breath.

Now it's anyone's guess how Ken feels. The notion of separating brought no protest from him, no pleading. Dressed in his winter sweat suit, the one the kids gave him for Christmas, he waited for Moira to finish as she presented to him, voice trembling, the idea that their marriage had died. He didn't disagree, or saw no point in doing so. Perhaps he'd known it long before she did. We should talk about this, he said, as if they had options to explore. He went for his walk that night, even remembered to put the trash barrel out by the curb.

Sean is talking baby talk to the kitten, making Michael laugh. He stops when he sees his mother watching him, and something makes him fear she will resist this, because he says, "We better bring the cat inside. See what she thinks of the house."

"Yeah," says Michael, "let's take her in."

Moira hears the need in their voices, the willingness to believe that they can take this animal into their lives and make a place for it. And a fierce resistance rises inside her like a warning. This is where the line must be drawn for them, with these seemingly harmless surrenders, these little ways that life will set you up if you let it.

"No, we can't keep it," she insists, as if the animal were a leopard.

Sean looks as if she's slapped him. "Why not? Why?"

"This just isn't a good time for us to be taking in strays."

Sean is about to speak again, but Ken cuts him off. "It's such a small thing they're asking, Moira. Can't you . . . It's such a small thing." His voice is sharp, angry. He rarely speaks with such feeling. "I mean it's going to be a hard time for them."

"It's a complication I don't need right now."

"I'm not talking about what you need." He looks away from her, squats down near the boys in the fort. They can hear a plow at the top of the street, carving out a means of escape. "Maybe we could keep it at my place," he says.

Sean looks first at his mother, then at his father. He seems on the verge of something. "You're really going to do it?" he says.

"I don't understand what you mean, Sean," says Ken. But Moira does. Sean had himself convinced that it would never really happen, his father would never actually go through with it.

"You're gonna go live in that stupid apartment?"

Ken doesn't answer him; he's taken off guard. He glances at Moira. Why didn't we see this coming? his look says. Why wasn't it in the books?

"I understand how you feel, Sean," he says, desperate for an answer they both know he doesn't have.

Sean releases the cat to Michael and climbs away from the fort. He moves toward the house, gets as far as the railing of the deck, about forty feet away from the others. He places both hands on the railing and leans into it, like a fighter breathing between rounds. Moira looks away, certain that he would not want her to see him like this, so powerless. She sees it was a mistake to refuse him.

"He doesn't want you to leave," Michael tells them, and Moira sees that to Michael it's entirely possible that neither of his parents understands that yet.

"I know, honey," Moira says, leaning down to reach for Michael. "I know." But he doesn't come to her, doesn't want to let go of the cat. The animal seems more restless with Michael, less willing to be held, and with an odd, unexpected turn of its head, it looks at Ken and speaks what sounds like a complaint, as if in this man it recognizes someone who knows what it feels like to be held against his will. 

Moira stands again and turns to look at Sean, ready to tell him okay. But by then the ice—glistening, hard, perfectly packed and rounded—has left his hand. She sees only the close of the pitch, the step forward, the hand dangling. The smash into the side of her face brings an explosion of pain, landing her into the fort so suddenly she doesn't even cry out. Michael loses hold of the cat and it darts away, a swift, effortless dash to a hiding place in the far end of the yard. The boys take off after it.

Ken kneels down to look at Moira's chin. He touches the redness. "Get away from me," she tells him, so angry her vision is blurred. She pushes him away and he loses his balance, takes a second to right himself. He's startled. This is not like her.

"Moira, calm down."
"You did this to him." Her voice is a hiss.

"Stop it."

"You and your lies." She sits up, steadies herself against the sloping side of the fort.

He moves closer, rests a hand lightly on her forearm. "Don't. Don't do this."

She recoils as if burned. "They have a right to know why this is happening."

"It's happening because you want it. You want a separation," he says, his anger controlled, matter of fact.

"And you're happy to let them think you don't."

"I don't want it."

"That' a lie. You just want your own terms, your own schedule. Another two or three years from now, when the time is right for you." She's breathless, trembling.

"Stop it."

"Maybe your sons have a right to know who you really are." She stops herself, aware that her voice is getting loud. She looks toward the boys and has to stifle a sob.

"Moira, Moira," he whispers, leaning closer. He doesn't touch her. They sit silent together in the snow, as if resting from a slope that was out of their league. "I'm not sure even I know that," he says.

"Spare me." She detests his find-your-inner-self bullshit. "Things got tough. They get tough for everyone. You didn't want to work it through."

"There was nothing left for me by then." The line is familiar, rehearsed. Still, it goads her that he thinks he can still hide behind these half-truths, side step the hard parts.

"Nothing left? What about your sons?"

"Please, let's not do this."

She sees it's pointless, stays quiet. But the quiet frightens her. "What are we supposed to do? What?" She's panicky, desperate, as if he has the answer but may refuse to tell her what it is.

"We can stay together. Be a family. We can do it for them."

She makes him repeat it, but she sees what he's offering. Anesthesia. She can go under and all this will pass. She will feel nothing. They'd be doing what they did before, except this time they'd both know the rules. She almost laughs. It would be more honest than anything they've had so far.

Ken touches her hand. "We can do this," he says.

"Yes," she says. He squeezes her hand and there's a pause between them, almost a smile. "I want to," she tells him, and he squeezes again, as if he means to cheer her on, get her to see that they can put all the ugly details aside. "But I need something," she says. The words are barely audible, but his face changes. He knows what's coming. "Tell me the truth," she says.

His body sinks. With the merest glance, he takes his hand away, closes up. She can see what she has become to him, an interloper, an intolerable presence. She is the mother of his children and if he could take them back, the way he's taken back everything else that connected them, she's convinced he would.

He gets up, heads back to the house. He walks slowly, shoulders slumped, the bottoms of his pant legs wet from snow. He slides the glass door aside and ducks, the way he always does, just enough to avoid the low frame. He guides the door back into place just so, to keep it from catching on its track. He knows this house. He belongs here. She sees that. 

Moira touches her face, surprised to feel tears have come already. Something has opened. The tears are hot and urgent. The truth, and she knows this, is that she's relieved, because she doesn't want to know what really happened. And she is grateful not to have to.    

She looks up at the sound of Michael calling to the cat, running zigzag to keep his indifferent little playmate from getting away again. She doesn't call to him, but she hopes he won't stay out too long. It's so cold, and he has no hat, no protection. Sean is a little bit away from his brother, sitting very still under the big elm. She watches him for a long while. The wind, playing high in the snow-laden branches, sometimes loosens a thin curtain of flakes, veiling their view of each other.

Driving home through a moonless night, over the shoulder-less two lane blacktop, Shelly Howell's eyes and ears are still full of the holiday-like lights and party music of the Indian casino. There, it was all colors and noise and excitement and she always wished she could stay longer. There, it was like she didn't have a husband and sons at home or a baby girl who died of meningitis. She'd played on at least a dozen video slots in the three hours she was there, but right now she can only remember the last two. The fairies and scepters of one and the mermaids and shells of the other still dance behind her eyes, beckoning her back.

She'd had some luck with the mermaids and some on a couple of machines earlier, enabling her to leave with eight dollars more than she came with. The thirty-three dollars is tucked down into the lining of her purse; she will retrieve it tomorrow and hide it between the pages of Ladder of Years. It feels good to have a little money stashed—in case. And Anne Tyler's book about a runaway wife seems like an appropriate place to hide her stash. She turns on the radio to relieve the silence, so unnatural sounding after the noise of the casino, and to cover the ringing in her ears.

Last week, she had not been so lucky. She had lost all but five dollars of the twenty-five Russ had given her for casino night. Of course, she tells him she lost it, no matter how it turns out. She always takes a little something home to squirrel away. With the thirty-three from tonight, she has nearly two hundred dollars.

The oldies station is playing a Billy Joel song and she sings along ... go ahead with your own life and leave me alone ... the peppy music reminds her of the video games. Realizing suddenly how dark the night is, she turns on the brights but they only illuminate the rising ground fog so she turns them off, but not before seeing the deer in the ditch beside the road—three at least—and braking, saying a little prayer of thanks that she hadn't encountered one on the road. This area is thick with deer, year round. She slows down a little more, though she is already going below the speed limit. Fifty-five is way too fast for this road at night.

Ahead, a car is pulling on from a side road and moving toward her. Unusual, for she usually drives all the way home without encountering anyone. As it approaches, they flash their brights and she automatically clicks hers to prove they are not on.  It's a small, high-profile SUV—a Jeep—but it has a light on top. Police? Highway Patrol?   

A glance in the rear-view mirror reveals that the Jeep is slowing down, looking for a place to turn around, probably. Shelly looks at her speedometer. Is it illegal to go ten miles under the limit? Her foot is already poised over the brake when the light on the Jeep begins to flash, but there is no shoulder to pull off onto. She slows more, looking for a farm lane that isn't obscured by the low hanging fog. Soon, as the earth lifts slightly, one appears on the other side of the road. She signals right and pulls into it, cautiously, hoping she won't get stuck. It has been a dry September in Eastern Iowa though, perfect for harvesting. The lane is dry and hard, and crushed down by farm equipment.

As the Jeep pulls in close behind her, adjacent to the road, she notices and briefly wonders why the blinking light is white and not red. Aren't they usually red? Maybe some departments are red and others are white, the way they all have different sirens, and who knows the difference. Certainly not her.

She has never been stopped before, for she is a cautious driver and doesn't speed. Learning to drive had been hard for Shelly. It did not come naturally. She had compensated by learning all the rules and following them diligently. Still, Russ reminds her constantly that she is a bad driver. She hopes this won't take too long because he'll be mad at her if she's late. She's supposed to be home by midnight and it's ten of right now. And he'll be furious if she gets a ticket. It will probably make their insurance go up as it did when Russ got a speeding ticket. She recalls how he had blamed everyone but himself. Like he blamed her for Melinda dying, even though he had ridiculed her for being so worried and for wanting to take her back to the hospital for the third time. Then later, he said a good mother would have known the hospital was wrong, and maybe he was right.

Russ lets her go to the casino every Thursday night in exchange for her doing whatever he wants Friday night—things she doesn't want to think about before or after. But the bargain is a no-brainer for her, since he'd make her do it all anyway. He always gets what he wants, one way or another.

The white blinking light on the Jeep disappears and the sky behind her is black once again. In the red glow from her tail-lights, the lower part of the driver's door behind her is illuminated. It opens slowly and a leg emerges. She is taken aback by a glimpse of gray and white athletic shoe and faded blue jean, but reasons that it must be an undercover cop. She looks down to fish through her purse for her license and jumps at a light rap on her window.

"Get out of the car, Ma'am," says a surprisingly young voice. He is a shadow in the dark above and behind her. Of course, he wants to see if I've been drinking. As she opens the door, clutching her license in her left hand, cold, damp air rushes past her and the door seems to fling itself open all the way. Balance lost, she begins to fall, but a hand grasps her arm and pulls her roughly out into the night. Her mind is blank with shock for a brief moment as she squints at the dark form attached to the tourniquet grip on her arm. It is a young man she sees, when her sight makes its way through the dark between them—a boy too young to be a policeman—standing beside the back door of her car.

"What is this?" she asks. "You're not a cop?" She turns at a sound to her right, a voice or maybe a shuffle of movement, and sees the face of another boy—a familiar one. From the grocery store maybe? No, he is a Killian—Tate or Payne—yes, Payne Killian. Paul and Karen's oldest boy. Shelly remembers him from church, slumping between his parents, always kept separated from the brother and sister, always a count behind in standing and sitting, as though he has no idea what is going on. Passive-resistance to organized religion and parental authority—like so many kids his age. Years ago, she'd admired his bright blue eyes and shy smile but no more. She fears her own boys are headed in the same direction, hints of sullenness already appearing in them, at only eleven and twelve years old.

"Hi Payne," she says. "How are your parents?" For she realizes these boys are up to no good and hopes to temper their plans, whatever they are, with a dose of reality. She adds, "Are you having some car trouble?" perhaps giving them an out. Shelly realizes now that the Jeep is Paul Killian's. He has a rural postal route and the Jeep is his delivery vehicle.

Payne averts his eyes from Shelly, glancing at his friend, and at the ground around him, and back at his friend—a gangly boy with unattractive features that might someday improve with more flesh and adequate facial hair. One side of the stranger's mouth is pulled up in an exaggerated sneer, like he's trying to look evil. His eyes are black holes in the dark.

"No, you are," the boy snickers. "Us."

"Dru?" Payne says.

"What the ... ? You said my name?"

"She knows me, Dru. Forget it."

"Forget nothing. This is it, man."

"Come on, let's just tell her and go."

Dru produces a pocket knife and opens it by rubbing it against his jeans. He pulls Shelly to him with a jerk of her arm, and holds the knife to her throat. She smells the inoffensive sweat of youth on him, and something greasy, like fried food. He is much taller than her but probably not as tall as Russell. His cheek pushes hard against the side of her head and his breath is hot in her ear. Her own breath comes quick and shallow and her heart races wildly. Please, save me God.

"I'm not so sure about this, Dru."

"I am," Dru says. "We're splitting state, just like we planned."

"And we're not leaving a witness," he adds.

I'm the witness. He's going to kill me. He's going to slit my throat. While horrified, her thoughts are oddly lucid, as though she is watching the scene from a slight distance. As though she can watch her own death.

"Take me with you," she says, impulsively. "I'd like to leave the state too, start all over, alone. You won't be leaving a witness." Russell once told her if she ever left him it would be the same way she came into the world, naked and alone. That was before she learned not to argue with him.

Dru laughs, ruefully.

"Without your family?" Payne says, looking at Dru.

"You know what Russell's like, don't you?" Shelly pleads. "I thought everybody ... "

"Yeah, yeah, we know all about it," Dru interrupts.

"He's demanding and controlling and mean. I've been thinking about running away. You could take me along."

"I can do whatever I want," Dru says. "Don't tell me what I can do."

"Maybe we could," Payne says, moving closer.

"That's bullshit. She's just trying to save herself." Dru pulls her away from the car. "Get in there and shut off those headlights," he adds, over his shoulder.

Payne reaches into the car and gropes around until he finds the button to turn off the headlights and the three of them are momentarily swallowed by darkness and silence.

"Now check her purse and the glove compartment," Dru says, after a brief pause in which the contours of the barren landscape emerge. He pushes Shelly down onto the ground and hovers over her with his knife.

"You don't have to rape me," Shelly says, with a calmness that surprises her. "I'll cooperate."

It is true that Russell is controlling and demanding, and that she has thought of running away. It's easy to think about doing such a thing, but not so easy to do. Still, when she asked them to take her she was only trying to save herself.

Even angry, Russ is not as scary as Dru. Russell often says things he probably doesn't really mean, when he thinks she isn't acting right, which is way too often. And then he gives her the cold-silent treatment for two or three days. She hates him when he does that—allows herself to think about him dying in some kind of accident at work and imagine her life without him. But right now she longs to be next to him in their queen-sized bed, hugging the edge as he creeps over onto her side. His arms around her are heavy and possessive, but that can be comforting too. If only he would suddenly show up and save her from these boys. Maybe he will. Maybe he'll wake up and see that she's late and come looking for her.

The cold of the ground creeps through her sweater, and something hard digs into the side of her back. The air is thick and smells like wet earth. Dru jerks down her jeans without giving her the opportunity to cooperate. Somehow, the knife has moved from his hand to his mouth. He grips it between his teeth, forming his lips into a fiendish grimace. The full weight of his upper body rests on hands that clutch her breasts, pushing air out of her chest and causing her to breathe in shallow pants. His first hard thrust is dry and misses its mark. When she cries out in pain, he moves one of his hands up and presses on her throat with his fingers until she starts coughing. The ground seems to be moving under her head and the world to be spinning. She clamps her eyes shut to quell the dizziness, and lights explode in her head like a bonus game on a slot machine. She thinks, for a moment, that she is still in the casino, that this is all a figment of her paranoid imagination. She often imagines break-ins, and tornados, and snowy car crashes, waking to a gun pointed at her head, or hiding in the basement while the house collapses around her, or being stuck in a car that's run aground in a snow-bank and watching as out-of-control cars slide toward hers on a collision course.

But it is not her imagination this time. The weight pressing her into the earth is solid, the knife between his teeth sharp. And the other weapon—the one between them – plunges in and out, without resistance, for her mind no longer feels attached to her body, as though the knife has already been used to slice her apart. It is like this with Russ sometimes, this detachment, when he makes her do things she doesn't want to do. Sometimes she even falls asleep. How he hates when that happens. If she lies very still now, and Dru thinks she's asleep, it might make him mad and give him more reason to use the knife; better to try to make him like her. Trying to roll her hips is futile, for his full weight seems to be pushing down on her, restricting her movement. She focuses on her arms, forgotten until now, awkwardly positioned on the desiccated prairie grass. They are heavy, as though the blood in her veins has turned to lead, but she lifts them, slowly so as not to arouse suspicion, and caresses the boy's back through his jacket. Or does she? No, her arms have not moved at all. They might as well be nailed to the cold earth. Jesus, her heart cries out, save me.

Payne stands next to her car. Watching? He's only a few feet away but his face is in shadow, features blunted as a gray sock-puppet. He will have to go next, she knows, otherwise Dru will think he's going to turn on him. She has seen enough crime movies to know that. They need to ditch the mail Jeep and take her car, but they won't want to leave a witness. Not a live one. She prays, hastily, If this is my cup, Lord, please forgive me my sins and let me into Heaven where I can be with Melinda.

Dru withdraws suddenly and spills his seed onto the ground next to them. Why? Will he let her live? Steam from it rises into the cold night air and disappears into the fog. They both look up expectantly at Payne's still form. His head turns in a negative response, and then he speaks, low, "No."

"No?" Dru says, incredulous, "Okay, fine, we'll get it over with now." He picks the knife up off the ground where it now rests, under his hand, and looks at it, as if uncertain about how it works. His eyes move to her neck.

Now Shelly's arms spring up off the ground and her hands clutch her neck. How skinny and fragile it feels. Like her children when they were newborn babies. She'd been so afraid she would not be able to protect them, and then she hadn't been able to protect Melinda. But the boys are strong and independent now, sleeping peacefully, unaware that they will soon be motherless. God, please be with my children, help them through this.

"No," Payne repeats, louder now. "Don't do it."

"Are you nuts? She can identify us. And we took half the money already. There's no backing out of this." As Dru works to pry her hands away from her throat, the knife comes so close to her eyes it looks like two of them. Her eyes close.

"No, please, no," she pleads, now clutching at his hands.

Suddenly his hands jerk and release their grip on hers. She opens her eyes cautiously. His head still hovers above her, but is no longer looking at her. His face is turned up and slightly to her left, as though looking at something in the dark at the front of her car. Now the knife is gripped loosely, in a fist that leans heavily on her chest. It is so hard to breathe, with the weight of his body on her abdomen and his fist pushing on her chest; she can only take in little sips of air. Has she already been stabbed? Is this her last breath? Yes, her head is spinning and the top of her face is going cold, as the life drains out of her. This is what her baby girl felt. Melinda.

Payne reappears on her left and now he shoves Dru's shoulder, hard, and Dru falls off her. She feels tingly, and buoyant, but unable to move, as though the ground is pulling her down, exerting its claim on her.

"I'm sorry, he wouldn't stop, I'm sorry," Payne cries. "I had to do it, he wouldn't stop." Before she can respond, he grabs her hand and pulls her up, saying, "We gotta get out of here, hurry," and nearly drags her toward the Jeep while she struggles with her pants. Shelly tries to resist—what is he planning?—but her body is unresponsive and weak as a baby.

In a voice frantic and whiney, he says, "Come on, we gotta leave, we're not safe here, hurry," as he pushes her into the Jeep. "We'll go to the police."

As soon as Payne gets in, Shelly hears the door locks click down. He starts the engine and then checks the lock button again. "Oh boy," he says, again and again as he drives back toward the casino through patchy fog banks.

"Where are you going?" Shelly asks, her voice hoarse and low as though she has been screaming. Has she? Her throat seems to have a memory of it. In the dim light from the dashboard, she examines herself for knife wounds.

"I told you, the police department," he says, panic rising in his voice. "We're in danger."

"From Dru?" Will he wake up and chase them with her car? She thinks of her purse; is it still in the car?

"No, he's dead. I think. I stabbed him. He wouldn't stop. He was going to cut your throat. I had to stop him." The whine has returned. He sobs ... repeats, "I had to stop him."

At the intersection with Highway 30, Payne switches on the windshield wipers and turns east, away from the casino, whose lights give a pale glow to the receding horizon. Ahead, only the night and drizzly rain. There is denial in the movement of his tense profile. Is he really rescuing her? Their own small town has no police department. The cops have an office in the City Hall, which closes at six o'clock, after which, calls are routed straight to the car. The closest big-city police station is Cedar Rapids, ahead about thirty miles, but surely Tama has one that is open all night. It's only about five miles from the casino. Why didn't he go to Tama? She asks him.

"Dru's father works there."

"A cop?"

"Yeah."

And who are they fleeing, if he thinks Dru is dead? Every minute or so, he glances in the rear-view mirror like he's expecting someone. What was it Dru had said about money? They already took half the money. Had they robbed someone? There's no backing out of this. What does it have to do with her?

"What did Dru mean? About the money?"

Payne gives her a sidelong glance and looks away, then he purses his lips and shakes his head again.

"We were paid to kill you," he finally says.

At first, the words make no sense. A foreign language. And then, as they assemble  into a recognizable form, her heart palpitates, and the world spins around her head. Her hands search for anchors as her eyes clamp shut to block out the swirling lights and fight back rising nausea. What does this mean?

"Who would want me dead?" she asks, disbelieving but still dreading the answer.

Payne answers reluctantly, "Your husband."

This time, the words come through loud and clear—as if she has been preparing herself for them—and they are surprisingly believable. It was the same after Melinda died. At her funeral, Shelly realized she had always known she would lose her. Melinda was too perfect, too good for this world. Her head drops into her lap and her shoulders heave in sobs. Why not just get a divorce? What sense does it make?

"Why?" she says aloud, not really expecting an answer.

Payne shrugs and so she doesn't think he will speak, but after a minute or two he says, "Probably doesn't want to pay child support."

Shelly supposes that is it. With her out of the way he would get the kids, the house, the car, and all his money. He could move another woman in if he wanted, might even have one picked out already. Will anyone be able to stop him from trying it again?

"So that's who you're afraid of?"

"Yeah," he says, glancing in the mirror again. Then he begins to talk, fast and urgent. "You saw. I had to do it to stop him from killing you. You have to tell them. I don't want to go down for murder."

"Will they believe you about Russ?" What if they don't? If they don't put him away, she'll never be safe again.

"I have the money. They should be able to trace it back to him."

The rain has washed the fog from the air and, with the city ahead of them, the horizon is lightening, like sunrise, giving her hope for an end to the night and the darkness. She stares at it with hungry eyes, and now she remembers to thank God for giving her a champion.

"Did you plan to kill me?" she asks, cautiously, as they finally approach the first streetlight. She has always been comforted by streetlights, even the one that shines into her bedroom window all night and annoys Russ so much. How safe she had felt as a child in her grandmother's apartment over a drugstore in downtown Dubuque, with a streetlight just outside her bedroom window and the colored glow of neon from the bars across the street. 

"No," Payne says, emphatically. "I thought we'd just split with the five thousand and forget about the other five thousand he said he'd give us after it was done. I thought he deserved to lose the money, after what he tried to do. I didn't know Dru planned to do it. I thought we were going to warn you." His voice breaks up, like he's choking back sobs.

He's afraid, just like me, she thinks, and he knows he's in trouble. "You saved my life," she says. "I'll tell them."

It could have been anyone, a pro he met in a bar, Dru alone, or he could have done it himself. He could have poisoned her. She remembers the medical examiner on one of the CSI shows saying that poisoning is one of the hardest crimes to solve, so he might have got away with it. But he chose Payne, a boy from their own church. Stupidity or divine intervention? She knows the answer to that. Payne is in trouble, of course, but not as much as if he had gone through with it.

"Thank God you were there," Shelly says. "And thank you."

The windshield wipers squeak loudly, as if in response. The rain has slowed to a drizzle that is trying to turn to snow. Flakes hang in the air sparsely, like low-flung stars, reminding her that winter is coming, and with it the holidays. Thanksgiving without Russ. Christmas without Russ. Life without Russ, just like in her fantasies. She feels strangely elated. Before going into the police department they sit for a minute in the Jeep, watching now large flakes of snow chase one another assuredly in the pools of light from above.

It's not like I give a rat's ass. The way Gloria walks into an opening at my gallery all high heels and silk scarf, smile to save the world, and powerhouse shoulder pads like she's got to reshape what she's been given. I remember the frump behind fawn. The way she pats anti-wrinkle cream under her eyes twice a day and leans across the bathroom sink for a zoom-in view of her gum line. As if decay could be caught by such simple investigation.

I used to tease her about this stuff when we were still sweet on each other. Me, naked under the sheets in her bed with my head propped on the pillow so I could watch her dress for work. She'd shimmy into control top Leggs; Lord, the way she had to twist and bend, paying no mind to the way this movement rippled up her spine and jiggled her breasts like a hula dancer's. "Baby, why cover up a good thing?" I'd tease, and if the morning was right she'd laugh and, losing her balance, fall onto the down comforter, her ankles kidnapped in a nylon net of wilted pantyhose and my hands on her that fast, begging her to be late to work.

But now that Gloria's gone Helen of Troy, now that she's all sweet mouth and single again, I'm hard pressed to say anything when she comes into the shop and if you ask me, it's better that way. Men outnumber women in Basswood, Kentucky four to one. You say anything wrong and they'll send you packing because they've got an entire brigade of the ready and willing pounding on their doors, just desperate for a little can-do.

Opening nights at my gallery tend to be a spectacle that way. Featured artists hold the top tier chutzpah at most openings, but there's an entire class of Basswood women who won't go near them. Say they're not worth it if they're not sticking around. That notion brings the Basswood men out in full regalia and for few hours we're granted unequivocal permission to flirt left, right, and center, no consequences. This rarely goes anywhere beyond the shop doors and by some grace of God everything settles back into place by the time the evening is over. That's about the time I lean real heavy on Gloria and suggest a little of the suggestive.

She pretends she doesn't notice, but that's part of the game. If it's a martini night, which means a high-end show, I barely have to part my lips and she's tugging on my sleeve, saying, "Doc, honey. My battery is dead again. Can you imagine?" But if it's red wine, she makes me work until I'm about ready to snuff the whole gig and charge out the glass doors onto Harris Street where the cold air will work like a woman's hand swatting at my face.

Thing about all that rag-tag is, I'm the one who dropped Gloria in the first place. She knew I wasn't the marrying type. I nearly jumped ship the time we took off for a week, just the two of us, driving headlong toward palm trees and a little car camping to see the manatees in north Florida. We celebrated our one-year at Smitty's Fry House down on the pier, then walked the beach. We went for miles without saying a word, her hand gumming mine while we kicked shells and waited for the stars to come. Through the silence, I felt we'd come to an agreement. Leave it while it's still good. Get on home to Basswood and go our separate ways. Nothing spoke, nothing broke, as they say. Back at the campsite, I readied myself for a farewell night of affection. But when she piled into the pup tent head first, bare breasts swelling beneath her thin t-shirt and said, "Doc, let's make this the beginning," there was nothing in me that could have denied what her body offered.

Six months later she cornered me with a life-plan line-of-questioning and I knew I had to orchestrate some kind of retreat. Fast. She stood in my kitchen in bare feet and a nightie, making tea. It was Sunday. Rising only for food and drink, we liked to pile back into bed and read until mid-afternoon. Instead, I poured the tea and brought our mugs to the table, all business and brow. She put her hands on her hips, refused to sit down. I barely spoke two sentences before she started hurling Tupperware at my shoulders, mad as fire.

"You chicken shit motherfucker!" she said. "What the hell do you think this has been all about? I'm not getting any younger."

"I'm already promised, sweetie," I'd told her, raising my hands. "Lifelong bachelor. Proud of it."

"You're proud of something," she said.

"Hey now." I stood from the table and gently reached for her.

"I never should have—," she stopped herself. Backed away.

"Finish. What were you going to say?"

"The chicken shit motherfucker part?"

I stared at her. She was all sass by that point and I could see quite clearly this was the type of conversation where you think you're talking about something as simple as Georgia peaches, but what you're really talking about is the whole goddamn peach tree, right down to the farmer who stamped the pit into the ground.

"Look," I said, touching her elbow. Her body went rigid, arms at her sides, face like a plate of glass. She started to tear up, cracked blue eyes fixed on something behind me.

"Don't," she said.

I didn't try to stop her when she left.

•

The past is the past, but Rex still gives me the what-for when he sees Gloria's car parked overnight in front of the gallery. He owns the shoe shop next door and hasn't had a date in four years. That's small town for you. He has fidgety hands and short legs. Fourth generation to run Johnson's Shoe Store and not half bad at keeping up with the fashion trends. I told him I didn't understand why it was necessary to make something as simple as a sandal twenty-five different ways. He told me nothing was simple anymore and I had to laugh.

One night, we caught some R&R at the Timeout Pub and he laid into me, thick as shoeshine.

"You're bending the rules, Doc," he said.

"Say what you mean, Rex."

"I saw Gloria's car out front," he said. "Again."

I sighed. "Can't a man conjure up a little nostalgia when he wants?"

"It's not helping her any," he said.

"Who said I'm supposed to help her?"

"Seems you're helping yourself," Rex said.

"What do you care?"

"What I care is, there's a system in this town and, if you don't mind me saying, you're disrupting it." Rex dragged long and heavy on a Camel and looked straight at me. "You can't just have any woman you want, leave her, and have her back a few months later," he said.

"I don't get any woman I want. And I'm not taking anybody back. It takes work, what I do." I said.

"Well stop working so hard," said Rex.

"You're set on Gloria, aren't you? That's what this is about." Rex didn't answer. I flipped a cigarette from my pack and took my time lighting it, one eye on Rex, who gulped his pint of Guinness and shifted in his seat. "You can take her," I said, pointing the glowing tip of my cigarette at his chest. "Our after hours games don't mean much. Go on."

Pretty soon the bartender, Andy, sidled over to hear what the know-how who-dunnit was. He polished the pint glasses with a steamed rag, spinning them in his palms. Andy had a gold-capped tooth that caught the overhead lights and made him look like a fixture alongside all the brass trim and chrome decals at the main bar. He looked up from his task. "Huh. G-l-o-r-i-a," he said. "Huh. I'll bet fifty you can't back away from her for two weeks." He slapped my shoulder and reiterated his point: "Huh."

"I'll throw in fifty more," said Rex.

"So you're buyin' your first date in four years for a hundred bucks?" I put my cigarette out and shook Rex's hand. "Neighbor, you've got a deal."

•

That's when the silk scarves started killing me. How she'd run her fingers through the folds as if they were her own hair, or how she'd grip the ends with both hands and slide it across the back of her neck. I was lonely. Whether for her or for the grace of any woman I cannot say, but what I do know is that I slept hard and heavy those two weeks, nights stringing together like a series of blackouts that made whatever I ought to see in all of this too blurry to decipher. I closed shop promptly at five, ate in, and bought enough retail to get me through two summers and into next Christmas. The back storeroom exploded with boxes. I stashed overflow ceramic teapots, plate sets, and pitchers in my loft apartment. Surplus canvases leaned against the wall, covered with sheets. I tucked the jewelry in a lock box on a closet shelf and piled hand-knit scarves and hats across the end table in my living room.

Nights I stayed up late tallying inventory and arranging display cases. It seemed a shame, really, all these artists aiming for a twist that set their work apart from others. Next door, Rex sold shoes—something customers replaced every time the season changed, when the mood hit them, until they were piled 40 deep in their closets. At the gallery, customers invested in artwork because it couldn't be replaced. Or so they reasoned. But my gig was to sell, not critique, and it never mattered that I thought this one-of-a-kind notion was a bunch of phooey. Far as I could tell, no sense in pretending all the nuances mattered.

By some miracle, I didn't have any shows opening during the 14 days I swore I'd be hands down, hands off, but Rex's lot was on clearance and Lord, if he didn't have every Helen of Troy, Athena, and Andromeda shimmy through the doors to his shop. Gloria found a pair of pumps she wanted, something by Josef Siebel. Rex didn't have her size and made quite the effort to order a pair, express mail. She stopped by three days in a row until finally, Rex asked for her phone number and offered to call when the shoes arrived.

She wasn't halfway down the next block before Rex hustled into my shop with a piece of scrap paper in his hand. He slapped the paper onto the counter where I could see Gloria's handwriting and those fated seven digits. His hands were callused and cracked, fiddling with the knick-knacks near the cash register. But he had that hard-working charm, a from-the-ground-up look and just the kind of thing I couldn't offer.

"Congratulations, Rex. You're moving up in the world," I said.

"Funny," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

So far, we'd been treating the bet like a business transaction, but that afternoon there was something in his smile that irked me. I leaned across the counter and lowered my voice. "You know, I'm going to win this bet, my man. But I'm going to win it because I want to. Not because it's doing you any favors."

"Hey. All we said was hands off for two weeks." Rex tucked the paper into the pocket of his slacks. "Everything else is fair game, including me using this phone number to mix business with pleasure."

"I couldn't agree more," I said, leaning back, holding up my hands.

Rex frowned and walked toward the door. He tipped his chin to me on the way out, an attempt to get back on the up and up. "You going to trivia night at the Timeout later?" he said.

"You can bet money on it."

•

I arrived late enough to catch a fly-on-the-wall view of the trivia teams as a server cleared the scoreboard for another round. Rex and Gloria were on the same team and I had to believe Rex invited her to join him. He had cleaned up, even pressed the collar on his checked shirt and shaved real close. She'd dressed down from work, sat with one foot tucked underneath her on the seat. Her other leg was bent, hugged into her torso so she could rest her chin on her knee. She'd let her hair fall out of the banana clip, fanning it across her shoulders and the back of the chair. I saw her reach for a mug of beer with her right hand and noticed—she'd even taken off her jewelry.

I stepped back through the main doors and onto Harris, where patrons sat street-side, ordering: "Andy, buddy, one more round of IPA ... Whiskey sours for the ladies ... " Beyond them, a row of shops across the street, then two more streets running parallel to form the main drags of Basswood. Not too far along after that, the state highway cut out of town and into the foothills, a two-lane vein of potholes and patchy double-yellow lines.

I tipped my hat in case anyone was looking and turned away from the patio toward the gallery. I could feel something cooking in my chest like buried coals, mean and deep. I coughed a little and quickened my pace. The stars were out, like a million crystal eyes dotting the sky in Morse code. When I was a boy, I camped in the backyard when my parents were in a fallout fuss over things. They hollered loud enough to make the dogs bark. I kept out of it and gazed at the stars where I could imagine a secret in their configurations that might turn things right side up again, like life before the invention of time and turmoil and all that talk.

Nights I wanted company, I called through a tin can rigged with waxed string from my porch to my neighbor Darrell's side window. If his parents were still awake, he tugged twice indicating a no show. Otherwise, he chattered back through the opposite can, asking if I wanted marshmallows, Cheez-Whiz, or any other trash he could sneak from the pantry. Within minutes he'd appear, sleeping bag and junk food in tow and we'd stay up as late as we could, sometimes catching the soft edge of dawn as it burned the horizon. Darrell moved away after one year when his dad got a job with the Border Patrol. He sent postcards from Arizona that I coveted for months, though I never wrote back. After him, Tracy Cooper moved next door. She was my age, but I didn't care. I took down the tin cans and tossed the waxed thread into the boxwoods behind my house.

Back at the shop, I breathed easier. I turned on the track lighting and dusted a few shelves, then set to Windexing the glassware—chores I knew by heart—but I focused and worked slowly. The slightest slip could send a piece to the floor and shatter even the strongest glass. I bordered the upper frame of every window in my shop with hand-blown glass suncatchers, the kind that hold the morning's first light, framing its finest hour.

I'd traveled once to Chicago for an exhibition and saw a glass demo out in the courtyard of a giant conference center. The artist leaned into the pipe as if in prayer, pressing whiffs of breath from his lips through the hollow steel, shaping the piece with each exhalation. The golden orb of hot glass expanded into a molten pocket at the pipe's far end and I waited with the rest of the crowd, seduced. He worked patiently and always with a half smile, like he'd been burned before but now knew fearlessness. Nearing the furnace and dipping the rod into the crucible of glass, his skin glowed, reflecting the heat as he faced the hottest part of the job.

I bought the entire lot of suncatchers, wholesale. Nobody had anything like these puppies for sale in Basswood and when I returned, I found Gloria waiting for me in the loft. This, long before her attack with the Tupperwares. I made her wait upstairs. When I finished hanging the pieces in each of the windows, I called her down and turned on the outside lights. The suncatchers glowed like wall-to-wall Christmas lights. She grinned and I wanted to pull her to me, the light shining off her suncatcher eyes, but I couldn't make sense of how something so hot could harden and even break. She terrified me in that moment and I hated her for it. She had been so simple then, never a complaint or complication. Just easy, like falling into your favorite chair at the end of the day. That's how.

•

Two weeks came and went and by the end of it, I had a hundred bucks in my pocket and Rex had himself half a dozen dates with Gloria. I stayed busy preparing for the next opening, featuring the Kentucky Capital Potters. Andy came to the show and set me up with Cindy, a tall brunette who worked nights at the diner. I'd crossed paths with her on the job, but never out and about town.

"Cindy, this is Doc, huh. The owner of the gallery," he said.

"Welcome." I smiled and shook her hand. She leaned close to hear me over the din. "It's a pleasure to meet you after hours," I said.

She smiled and put her hands on her waist, cocking an eyebrow. "Eggs over medium, right? And corned beef hash?" She dropped her hands, tapped her foot, and waited to see what I'd do.

"Couldn't have said it better myself." I winked and took her arm. Andy slipped back into the crowd and I walked Cindy toward the open bar. A red wine night. She followed me to a display window up front. "These pots are all salt fired," I said, explaining the process. She lifted a tumbler and checked the bottom for the artist's signature. Her hands were pink and cracked from bleach water at work, but the rest of her skin looked buffed and smooth, untouched by the sun.

We crossed the gallery to another window and I knew by the way she exhaled a long breath that I had her. "And these pots here are raku fired," I said. "See the cracked glazes?"

Cindy gazed into a large slab vase, touched the lip of a lidded vessel and I noticed a familiar, latent fatigue cross her face. Not something to worry over, just a subtle weariness that might keep things easy for a while. She looked up and the life returned to her smile. "What are these?" she said.

"Suncatchers."

She spun a row of them around so they twirled on their tiny ribbons and made the window light in a comet of reflected colors. "Too bad," she said. "I'm never up early." Then she turned to me. "But they're lovely. They're really lovely."

•

The following week, I made a point to eat late at the diner a few nights and soon enough Cindy had a key to the back door of the shop. She had a hell of a laugh, almost too much sound to come out of one person, but it grew on me anyway—the way it filled the loft and seeped out into the streets below making us sound more alive than anyone in Basswood. We played gin rummy during Headline News and danced Salsa to Mexican radio on the AM dial. Cindy could swing and swivel but I couldn't get the steps down for the life of me, even after dos cervezas, and eventually I'd say shouldn't we head over to the Timeout to give Andy a good rub and shoot some darts?

Most nights, Cindy finished her shift at the diner around 2 a.m., then walked to the gallery and let herself in. In bed, she liked to warm her toes on my legs first and then we'd start in on each other, the wings of other lovers hovering above her shoulders like so many stars. I couldn't tell her that how I loved had nothing to do with her; that this everyday workmanship, like so many firings in a kiln, was my prayer to find something that never ran out.

The Stranger

I only saw River Swanson once before it happened. She was working at the library then, the one over on 32nd Street. I remember her because of her pink hair and her pink gum. She was straightening the children's section, and a sheet of neon pink hair fell over her shoulder so that her face was hidden behind it. And she was popping her bubble gum. Pop. Pop. Pop. I thought about the atrocity of the scene. I couldn't imagine a set of parents that would let a young girl like that dye her hair pink. She could use some real discipline, I could tell.  Pop. Pop. When I noticed her black painted fingernails, my suspicions were confirmed. She would end up being a menace to this society, and there was nothing I could do about it. I spied on her from behind the mystery section around the corner, sizing her up. I sure hoped my kids wouldn't turn out like that. I'd shave their heads before I let them turn their hair pink. She popped that gum so loudly that I wondered if she knew how it grated on me and so was doing it intentionally for that reason. Pop. Pop. It was like every pop was my bones cracking. I didn't go back to the library where the pink-haired girl worked.

The Next Door Neighbor

River Swanson lived in the house next to mine for eight years. She moved there with her parents and three younger brothers when she was just a little girl. She was always such a lovely girl. I don't have one complaint against her. She reminded me of my granddaughter. My granddaughter was her age, but she lived across the country and I only got to see her once every few years. But I saw River every day; this was long before it happened. When she was about ten or so, she asked me if she could plant a garden around my house. I could not, for the life of me, understand why she'd want to do that, but I told her I'd sure be happy to see some pretty flowers in place of those nasty weeds. I liked to sit on my lawn chair on the front porch and watch her while she dug up my front yard one weed at a time. She worked all summer, but I don't think she thought of it as work. She was such a smiling girl. I'm no naturalist, but she picked the prettiest flowers for my garden. They were colors like I'd never seen before. All kinds of blues and reds and bright yellows. My house became quite a spectacle of color. After she was finished, she photographed my garden from all sides. It was a strange thing to do, I thought, since all she had to do was look out her window to see her colorful masterpiece. She must have taken at least fifty pictures of the garden. A couple days later, when I was taking my little Pomeranian on his afternoon walk, I noticed that River had hung up all the pictures of my garden on her window, facing the outside. Her window was covered in colorful replicas of her next door neighbor's garden. She was a strange girl, but lovely in her own way.

The Admirer

It happened before I ever got a chance to talk to River Swanson. I saw her everyday at nine o'clock in the morning for a year, and I planned a million ways to talk to her. Everyday she came into my coffee shop and ordered a vanilla frappuccino, no foam. Everyday, she stood by the counter reading a book until her order was ready. I handed it to her everyday. Our fingers would always almost touch. She would always almost smile, and I would always stumble on almost spoken words.  The memory of her is ingrained into my thoughts. She had thick brown hair that was delicately curled at the bottom. It was shiny; her highlights glimmered underneath the lights. Her lips were always bright red, and she wore large sunglasses on top of her head. Her fingernails were long and manicured, and her high heels tapped on the floor as she walked. Her skirt was tailored and tight and matched her blazer. When she moved, gold hoops dangled off of her earlobes. I wondered where she went every morning with her frappuccino. Work, probably, but where?  It must be somewhere important. She always looked so important. That's why I never talked to her. She had more important things to do than talk to me. I was just the owner of the coffee shop where she stopped every morning to order a frappuccino, no foam. The one whose fingers she always almost touched.

The Counselor

River Swanson was sent to me when she was in the seventh grade. Her mother was worried about her because she skipped school one day and dyed her hair green. She was worried that her daughter had the wrong friends. They were a bad influence on her. That's what they all say. Sometimes, it's true. A child just associates with the wrong crowd. But after meeting River, I was sure it was something deeper, so I agreed to counsel her. Her hair was already brown again when she showed up for her first appointment. She was not at all angry that her mother had sent her here. In fact, she seemed rather amused by it. She answered all my questions without hesitation, and if she was holding back information, she fooled me. I was right in assuming that her friends were not the problem.  They all seemed relatively normal by my standards. I concluded that the green hair was an act designed to draw attention to herself. I was confident in my analysis of the girl. She was different from the troubled kids I saw on a regular basis. She seemed so airy and agreeable. She just wanted to be seen as something special; she wanted to be set apart. I was so confident in my theory that I ended her counseling after three sessions. River was not suffering from depression or any other psychological problems besides a little pre-teen drama. She would be absolutely fine. A week later I was told that she was in the hospital under twenty-four hour watch. She had tried to kill her grandpa's dog, and the doctors thought she might be a danger to the smaller siblings who lived with her. Maybe I should have kept seeing her. Maybe, then, it wouldn't have happened to her.

The Other Driver

I crashed into River Swanson's VW beetle and tore it to pieces. I was out of my mind when I realized what I'd done, sure that I had killed her. They told me I had a concussion and put me in an ambulance, but I was hysterical. I kept asking about the girl I hit. Was she okay? Was she okay?  No one would give me any answers. They put me through hell at the hospital. Examination by a nurse. An MRI. Interrogation from a cop. Where was the girl I hit? Was she okay? Settle down, son. That's what they told me. You have to settle down, you're in shock. I was not in shock. I was so far past shock that I was about to explode. Finally my girlfriend arrived at the hospital. She, God bless her, had inquired about the girl, knowing that I'd be going crazy with worry. She would be fine, my girlfriend told me. Was she hurt? Yes, but she'd be fine.  It wasn't your fault. They said it wasn't your fault. I stayed in the hospital that night until they would let me see the girl. She was all alone.  No family. Nothing. The first time I saw her, I completely lost it. She was really beat up. My truck destroyed her car and almost destroyed her, too. Every inch of the girl's fragile skin was covered in ugly bruises. She had a cast on her elevated leg and an IV in her crushed arm. She was young, too. As young as me, maybe younger. Twenty-five? Twenty-four? I stood motionless at the door as tears poured down my face. I knew I was not going to forgive myself for this. But she did something incredible. She turned her head slowly towards me until our eyes met, and then she smiled. She knew I was the other driver. It was obvious by the way I was crying like that. She should have hated me. I deserved it, but she smiled and said that angels must have been on our side today. I didn't believe it when, a few year later, someone told me what happened. How could angels be so cruel?    

The Summer Comrade

I met River Swanson at summer school the year I turned fifteen. She'd failed ninth grade biology and was making up the credits while I was making up the credits for algebra. Neither of us thought summer school was worth a dime, so we spent our morning breaks cursing the summer gods for forcing us to repeat. I blamed my algebra teacher who hated my guts. River blamed her queasy stomach. She said she failed because she refused to dissect a frog. I failed because I refused to do my homework… and because my teacher hated my guts. On the second to last day of summer school, River decided that we deserved a free day. I wasn't about to argue, so that day we both wore our swim suits underneath our clothes. As soon as our parents drove away from the drop-off area, we bolted.  We spent the day working on our suntans at the city pool. River had on a sparkly pink bikini, and I thought she looked so breathtakingly fine in it. When she crashed into the pool from the diving board, she splashed a little kid who started to cry. The kid's mother looked repulsively at River, but River didn't apologize. When she was back on the deck, she whispered to me that the little kid needed to get out more if he lost it over a little water in his face. She spread herself out on a towel and let the sun dry her skin. She was amazingly smooth. I wanted to ask her out, but I didn't because a girl like that is way out of my league. She'd humor me during the summer, but I knew that once the fall semester started, she'd be long gone. We had one thing in common and that was the summertime blues. Once they were gone, I'd never hear from her again. When I heard that it happened, all I could think about was that sparkly pink bikini. She looked so fine. So fine.

The Best Friend

River Swanson used to be my best friend before she ruined my life. Every weekend when we were kids we would take turns spending the night at each other's houses. Her house was like my second home and my house was like hers. We had a set of plastic horses that we would play with for hours at a time. Some of them were mine and some were hers, but we combined them so that, together, we had at least twenty horses. We liked to turn one room into a giant horse ranch, making stables out of books turned on their spine. We had to spend at least an hour constructing the perfect floor plan for the ranch and deciding what each horse's name and history was before we could start playing. Usually, the plotline for our game was so extensive that we could hardly explain it. We put our horses through all kinds of messes like love stories and murder mysteries.  There were back-stabbing horses and lying, cheating horses and innocent victimized horses. Our mothers thought that the horses were our passion, so they signed us up for riding lessons. After enduring many hours of sore legs and stinky clothes, they finally realized that the drama of making up extravagant story lines for our horses was our passion, not the horses themselves. I should have known that River would use our little play dramas against me one day. I was so stupid that I never saw it coming. One day I was perfectly in love with a high school boy and the next day he was wrapped around River Swanson's little pinky. I wondered if she kept in touch with that boy. I wonder what he thought when it happened.

The Escort

I picked up River Swanson from the side of Highway 101. She was carrying a heavy backpack, and she had her thumb held up high in the sky. I don't usually pick up hitch-hikers but there was something about that blue-haired girl that made me pull over. She had on a blue dress and blue cowboy boots to match her blue hair. There was no chance this blue girl could be a serial killer or anything, so I figured I would be safe if I gave her a ride. I asked her where she wanted to go, and she told me to just let her out the next time I stopped. I was headed upstate, I told her. She said that upstate was as good a place as any, so I kept driving. I asked her why she had on so much blue, and she told me she it was a wardrobe for a play she was in. I was sure that she was lying because she said it as if she thought I was dumb for asking and so she was going to be dumb in responding. I didn't question her further. There was no telling what this girl's story was. As far as I knew, all she wanted to do was get away, and I was just the means to an end. She didn't say anything the rest of the way, but when I flipped on the radio she sang along with the Pink Floyd song that was playing. I thought it was amazing that she knew the lyrics to Pink Floyd considering he was decades before her time. But it was cool.  Maybe her generation wasn't as lost as I thought it was. I dropped her off at a diner right off the highway. I asked her if she needed some money, and she said she didn't so I left her there alone. When I heard about what happened, I wished I had known more about that blue girl.

The Doctor

I was there when the obstetrician delivered River Swanson at 1:42 in the afternoon in the middle of December. She was screaming as soon as she took her first breath.  She screamed all the way through her first examination and was still screaming when the nurses took her first picture. That baby girl sure could scream. I saw her many times after that. To me, she was just the same, minus the screaming. When she was six years old, she came to me with the chicken pox.  Her Mama was in a fit of hysteria because she had two other babies at home and this one was going to infect them all. I tried to calm her down, but River was the one who got her to stop whining. She told her Mama that everyone in her class had had the chicken pox before so it was nothing to get all worked up about. Her brothers were lucky, she said, because they were getting exposed so young and they wouldn't have to remember being itchy for two whole weeks. She was a smart little girl. And tough. The next time I saw her was when she broke her left ankle. She was about eight when she did that, and I asked her how on earth she messed up her ankle so perfectly. She had to be in pain, the way ii was turned backwards like that, but she grinned and told me she was chasing after a stray cat. The cat had jumped over a fence and River went right over after it, forgetting that she was not a cat and couldn't clear fences like one. The cat, River told me, had been sneaking in her house and leaving garbage everywhere. Apparently that cat was a treasure hunter and it would collect items from other houses and dispose of them in River's house. Well, when it showed up with a dead snake, River had had just about enough of that cat and his presents. So she chased it a block and a half before she got caught in the fence. She was tough for a girl her age. I was shocked when it happened. She had always been so tough. I thought she could handle just about anything.

The College Fling

During college, I dated River Swanson for about two months. She was one of those artsy, drama types. I was a concert pianist. I met her at a football game. She was completely covered in our school colors from head to toe, even her hair was dyed as red as a hot chili pepper. She was holding a foam finger and waving it around so fiercely that I'm surprised it didn't go flying off her hand with the wind. She was with a bunch of friends, equally as enthusiastic about displaying their colors. They were on the front row of the student section going wild.  They were screaming and heckling the other team so loudly that I could hear them over the announcer. I soon found out that River really didn't have very much school spirit. She just liked to put on a show. The night she broke up with me, she wore the soberest expression, and I really thought she was heart broken. She said that she just couldn't see our relationship going anywhere.  I let her tell me I was too good for her and that I deserved better. Her hair was back to its natural color then which was dark brown, almost black. She was wearing my navy blue hoodie when she said goodbye. I let her keep the hoodie, but I didn't talk to her again. A few days later, her hair was orange and she sang the National Anthem at the first basketball game of the season. She sounded great and looked even better. What happened shocked me. I just remember her red hot hair and foam finger.

The Florist

I saw River Swanson a week before it happened. She was standing in front of the window of my flower shop. She stood there for several minutes before I stepped outside to see if there was anything I could help her with. Was she lost? Was she confused? She smiled pleasantly at me and certainly didn't seem like the lost or confused type. She told me what lovely flowers I had displayed in the window, and I told her they looked even lovelier from inside the store. I was trying to make a sale. She took the hint and followed me into the shop. I pointed out the freshly cut roses and orchids, but she was more interested in the potted plants at the front. I told her the names of the plants and the type of care each one required, but she didn't seem to care about that. I was surprised when she pulled a small digital camera out of her hand bag and asked if she could take a picture of my flowers. Sure, she could. I didn't mind, though I thought it was a little odd. She snapped several pictures, and then she bought a pot of hot pink hibiscus. I told her that that one had been in bloom for quite awhile and would surely lose its color in just a few days. Maybe she would like a different one?  No, she wanted that one. She wouldn't have another. She said it was a shame that anyone should disregard a plant just because it was losing its color. It would bloom again, she said.

The Shadow

I did not know River Swanson. She was in one of my classes every year in high school. We were lab partners one year. I lit the matches and held them to the Bunsen burner while she turned the gas knob. She burned my finger tips because she turned it on too high. I wasn't allowed to go to the nurse's office because River couldn't complete the lab alone. It was a two person lab. Another year I beat her in badminton during gym class. I beat her three times until badminton week was over and replaced by flag football week. She was on my flag football team and we lost. We had to run a lap because the coach said our team didn't even try. He didn't remember that I had won three badminton games in a row. In eleventh grade, I was her understudy in the school musical. I never got to perform because she was never absent. The next year we shared a limo on the way to prom. She was there and I was there and so were eight of our friends. I didn't know her, though. She went to prom with the star of the fall play. I went with the star's supporting character. We weren't friends because I did not know her. I saw her a million times. I talked to her everyday. At prom, she had auburn hair and a silver dress. She looked stunning. I had bushy black hair and a white dress. I looked like the bride of Frankenstein. At graduation, her name was called right before mine was. They were still clapping for her when I was taking my diploma. Afterwards, we posed for a hundred pictures. She smiled and I smiled and we had our arms around each other. You would have thought that we were friends, but I didn't see her again. Not after that night. I didn't hear about her either. Not until it happened.

The Tattoo Artist

River Swanson stayed with me for three months after she ran away. She was a college girl, and I was the lead guitarist in the worst band in town. My real job was at the tattoo parlor downtown. I gave her a pink flower tattoo on her left shoulder free of charge. She looked like she needed it. She ran away from college because it was a trap, she said. I called her a crazy girl because she didn't know how lucky she was that she could afford something like college. That's the trap, she told me. It reels you in with false promises about the future and opportunities, but then it traps you and turns you into exactly what you are not. She was a drama queen, but I liked her. When she came to me her hair was blue, but she dyed it purple and then black. I liked it purple best. She didn't get a job, and she didn't go back to college. At first she wouldn't eat or talk very much, but soon she began to warm up to me. She had just about settled into a routine with me. She went to all of my band's gigs and hung out at the tattoo parlor every time I was working there. I planned on teaching her how to give tattoos so that she could do something, anything. But she left before I could. I didn't see her leave. One day she was sleeping in my bed and the next day she had vanished. She didn't leave a trace behind her. It was like she was never there. It was several days before I found the only thing she left—an empty bottle of brown hair dye.

•

River Swanson was twenty-seven when it happened. They said it was an accident. They said she didn't see the warning sign. They said she was happy. They said she had plans for the future. They said she was not done. They said. They said. River Swanson died alone. She was in her car when she drove off the rode. She knocked over an old wooden fence and kept driving. They found her car at the bottom, crushed against the rocks. Underneath the blood, her hair was five different colors: pink, green, orange, blue, and purple. In her hand was a photograph of a dying hibiscus. On the back was written in her own fine print: The angels were on my side.